‘No great concerns’ over hantavirus spreading to general public: infectious disease specialist

本站添加: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]President and medical director of the Vancouver Infectious Disease Center, Dr. Brian Conway joins us now. Doctor, good evening. Great to see you again. Thank you for taking out the time.

[00:00:09]Pleasure, actually. So, Doctor, we understand Canadians are being monitored right now. They are asymptomatic. They are isolating. But, if they were to develop any symptoms, how would one know that they are not symptoms of a regular flu versus hantavirus?

[00:00:24]If they develop symptoms of something that looks like a flu, they would be tested for RSV, COVID, influenza, and also do a PCR test for hantavirus. The test for hantavirus is the same type of test as we're used to seeing for COVID.

[00:00:37]The diagnosis would be made very quickly of of one or other of those infections, and most importantly, excluding that it is hantavirus. And we have all the proper protocols and approaches in place to deal with whatever diagnosis occurs.

[00:00:52]What is the cure if one is infected?

[00:00:56]Well, unfortunately, hantavirus itself has a very high mortality rate, about 25 to 30%.

[00:01:01]There is no treatment. There is no vaccine. So, once a diagnosis is made, I suspect the individual would be admitted to an intensive care type unit and isolated, and their breathing supported in a very proactive manner. And that really is the approach is to be very aggressive in terms of how you intervene, make sure that there is no evidence of organ failure, that breathing is maintained, and 75% of people, 80% of people will recover with this strain.

[00:01:32]In the past few days, Doctor, we have heard of how hantavirus spreads with close people-to-people contact. How do you think contact tracing will look like in this case with long incubation periods like 45 days like we just heard?

[00:01:46]So, first thing that's going on is back where the ship started in Argentina to try and monitor if there are outbreaks, if there was spread there, and that will give us a clue as to how it might have gotten onto the ship and so far no cases in Argentina. We're told that there were no rodents on the ship and for now we'll take it to their word, but that's usual mode of spread from rodents to humans.

[00:02:09]Beyond that it'll be a matter of investigating the cases that have been identified, the eight cases we know of, the five that are still surviving and try and get some clues about transmission to predict how likely it is that anyone else will be diagnosed with the infection.

[00:02:23]Doctor, what do you think about the protocol will be with the Canadian health officials when they head to Canary Islands to meet with the other Canadians on that ship?

[00:02:33]Well, the Canadians on the ship will be isolated for 45 days. Their history will be taken to determine if they were in contact with any of the cases that have been already diagnosed to try and gauge a bit of the likelihood of whether they they're more likely or less likely to develop the infection. They'll be briefed on what isolation entails, what symptoms to watch for. Then I suspect they'll be transported back to Canada for isolation as the two cases in Ontario that are that are right now in isolation. It'll be the same protocol in watching them for the entire incubation period of the virus, namely 45 days or so. Or so. Doctor, there are a lot of parallels that are being made of course with something we all have experienced just about 60 years ago.

[00:03:14]What would you like to say to those who are drawing that parallel?

[00:03:18]Well, I think that this is a virus that is known, it's identified, mode of transmission is identified, person-to-person spread is terribly infrequent and all of the measures are in place and it's highly likely that this will be a very self-limited outbreak and we're reassured that public health authorities are taking this seriously and keep us informed on an ongoing basis. So let's let's keep a keep an eye out for what's going on, but no great concerns at this point to be had. President and medical director of the Vancouver Infectious Disease Center, Dr. Brian Conway, appreciate your time. Thank you for joining us tonight.

[00:03:54]Oh, it was a pleasure, actually.