Dozens of passengers on hantavirus-infected cruise left without contact tracing

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[00:00:01]Breaking [music] news this hour. Fears of the haunt virus are now spreading across the globe. I'm Stephanie Lieieber in Washington and this is Morning Rush.

[00:00:08]Officials now say more than two dozen cruise passion passengers who were exposed to the haunt virus walked off the cruise ship before being tested and before any contact tracing. Authorities are racing to find those folks who are now scattered across multiple countries.

[00:00:23]Health officials say about seven Americans were among those who disembarked on April 24th and have since returned to the US. The news raises concerns that the virus could spread here at home. Scripts News international correspondent Stuart Smith has been tracking this story for us all week long and joins me now live. So Stuart, what more do we know about these passengers who left the ship on that, you know, rural isolated island?

[00:00:51]Yeah, there are effectively three groups of passengers now, right as we're talking. There are the ones that are on the ship going to the Canary Islands, a part of Spain. That's the majority, around 150 people. Uh none of them at the moment have symptoms, but are of course being will watched very very carefully in case they do. Then there's the other group, those that did develop symptoms. Uh currently uh just a few half a dozen symptoms have been sent to uh hospitals in Europe. So a Dutch, a German, a British national. or some of those passengers, some crew, and they're receiving medical treatment. But now there is this third group, those that left the ship before it was clear that there was a hivirus outbreak on board.

[00:01:29]As you said, more than uh two dozen, at least 30, I've read in some reports as well, disembarked the ship around the uh the islands in the South Atlantic St. Helena. Now, they, as you suggested, have spread across the world, including back to the United States. We've got some in here in the UK as well, as far a field as Singapore, New Zealand, and other countries in Europe. And so now, each national health agency is monitoring these people very carefully to see if they develop symptoms. Recall that the hand virus can take weeks before after infection you start to see any sign of being ill. And so in the United States, for example, we know there is at least one person who has come off that ship in Arizona, California, Georgia, Texas, and Virginia. of those that we know their status all have been reported as having no symptoms and the CDC is monitoring their situation. But the World Health Organization does say it expects more cases to emerged though at least now they are in countries with medical help available not stuck in a cruise ship in the middle of the Atlantic. Uh and so it still is saying that it does not anticipate anything like the CO 19 pandemic with clearly humanto human transmission possible with this virus.

[00:02:41]But they're still saying there's no evidence of widespread transmission risk and the CDC is saying at this time the risk to the American public is extremely low.

[00:02:51]>> Well, you mentioned COVID and the pandemic. Obviously, that is fresh in the minds of everyone around the world.

[00:02:56]Concerns that this could be the next pandemic. the WHO tamping down those concerns. But are there any tests for the HANA virus? Are there any vaccines that could potentially help here?

[00:03:10]>> Yeah. So yes and no. There are tests that can detect the hand virus blood tests we're talking about. So they take a blood sample from either the person who was deceased as happened in South Africa or from the people who have come down with symptoms. And that test can be done very quickly within a day. But again, in the right setting in the medical institutions that have the tests and resources to analyze this data very quickly. They wouldn't have had that on the ship for example, which is why it's been taking so long to confirm whether people have hivirus or not. Maybe they have symptoms of another disease. As to a virus, no, there isn't a virus that can be deployed instantly to help anyone concerned about this. There are people that have been working on antivirus vaccines for even for decades and there's one example in uh the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases has been looking at a antivirus vaccine for three decades. Of course, being a rare rare disease that's not commonly uh leading to death and also one that's not usually transmissible between humans, there hasn't been the same level of investment and research into it, which we could presume is certainly ramping up right now. And so you can test and there are signs that a vaccine might be possible but none of those are easily accessible at the moment.

[00:04:26]>> Right. And the WHO noting that the symptoms of the hivirus are similar to a regular cold or flu which can contribute to think you know people potentially thinking they just have the average flu going around and not potentially the haunt virus. So I'm sure that contact tracing and that monitoring by of health officials is going to continue for a while now. Scripts News international correspondent Stuart Smith as always.

[00:04:46]Thank you very much for your reporting live from London.