Cruise Ship Hantavirus Outbreak Sparks Fears But Experts Say No Pandemic Risk

Critical Differences From COVID-19

The deadly cruise ship outbreak of hantavirus may have evoked memories of the early days of COVID-19, but infectious disease specialists and public health officials say there are clear differences that make the risk to the public extremely low. "This is not another COVID," World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told CBS News.

Unlike COVID, which can spread through the air, this virus requires "prolonged" physical contact to spread from person to person. The CDC says transmission is "usually limited to people who have close contact with a person with symptoms," such as "prolonged direct physical contact" and "prolonged time spent in close or enclosed spaces."

Hantavirus "infects deep inside the lungs, not the upper respiratory tract, so it's much harder to cough or breathe out enough virus into the air" for it to be easily transmissible. This makes it fundamentally different from COVID-19, which spread efficiently through respiratory transmission. "With a more easily airborne virus like SARS-CoV-2 or measles in such a closed, contained vessel, you would be expecting many more passengers to be infected by now, and we're not seeing that," said epidemiologist Lina Moses.

The Cruise Ship Outbreak Details

The outbreak has reached 11 total reported cases, 9 of which have been confirmed. Three people have died in the outbreak — a Dutch couple and a German national. Eighteen Americans are now under observation at specialized healthcare facilities designed to treat people with dangerous infectious diseases, with some expecting to spend 42 days at the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

A Dutch couple, identified by WHO as the first cruise passengers infected with hantavirus, reportedly spent several months in Argentina and nearby South American countries before boarding the ship. Officials said the couple had taken a bird-watching tour that included a stop at a garbage dump, where they may have been exposed to rodents carrying the infection.

A French woman infected in the outbreak is critically ill and being treated with an artificial lung. The French passenger has a severe form of the disease that has caused life-threatening lung and heart problems.

Why Experts Aren't Worried About Pandemic Risk

While COVID was caused by "a brand new virus, where we were all learning in real time," hantavirus has been studied for decades and scientists are much more familiar with how it spreads. "The incubation periods are different, and that's actually helpful for us in containing it," said infectious disease expert Dr. Celine Gounder.

Experts said the low chances of human-to-human transmission make it almost "impossible" for hantaviruses to cause the next pandemic. Person-to-person transmission of the hantavirus is rare and occurs as a result of close, prolonged contact, such as close proximity within the same household or intimate contact.

State Public Health Veterinarian Carl Williams emphasized that the virus is not easily transmitted and should not be compared to COVID-19. The incubation period for Andes virus can be anywhere from around two to six weeks, meaning it may take that much time for someone to begin to show symptoms after exposure. "The good news here is, because of that long incubation period, that gave us more time," said Gounder.

Looking Forward

Argentina's health ministry said a team of scientists will be dispatched in the coming days to investigate the purported origin of the outbreak. Global health officials say the risk to the general public remains low because the germ does not easily spread between people, and public health officials say that the threat to the general public remains low based on what we know about the virus and how it spreads.

While the images of passengers in protective gear leaving the cruise ship may trigger pandemic flashbacks, this outbreak serves as a reminder that not every infectious disease carries the same global threat level. The swift international response and decades of scientific knowledge about hantavirus have positioned health authorities to contain this outbreak effectively, preventing the kind of widespread transmission that defined the COVID-19 pandemic.