All your questions related to Hantavirus, answered by an infectious disease expert

Now more than that More than 100 passengers on board com. hantavirus-The ill-fated luxury cruise ship They were evacuatedWith 18 Americans in biocontainment units in Nebraska and Georgia, health officials around the world are working to monitor more than two dozen people who left the flight and anyone they may have been in close contact with.

Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in a press conference that all 11 cases of Hantavirus reported so far were among passengers or crew members on the ship. press conference In Madrid on Tuesday. This includes three deaths resulting from the virus.

Typically, Hantaviruses are spread when contaminated rodent droppings and urine are moved into the air and inhaled. The strain identified on the cruise ship, MV HondiusIt is known as the Andean virus, and it is the only type known to be transmitted from person to person. While the virus can cause serious illness and has a high fertility rate, health officials say the Hantavirus outbreak is unlikely to become a global crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic.

“At the moment, there is no indication that we are witnessing the beginning of a larger outbreak, but of course the situation can change, and given the long incubation period of the virus, it is possible that we will see more cases in the coming weeks,” Ghebreyesus said.

WIRED spoke with Nicole Iovine, a senior epidemiologist and infectious disease expert at University of Florida Health, about how the Andean virus spreads and whether it is likely to spark another pandemic.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Wired: One of the things that is probably top of mind for most people is how similar the Andean virus is to SARS-Cov-2, and how common is it?

Nicole Iovine: It is not at all similar to the SARS-Cov-2 virus. This outbreak on the cruise ship will not translate into a global pandemic like Covid for a number of reasons. One reason is that it is not as contagious as Covid. Covid has infected our upper airways as well as deep in our lungs. But the fact that it has infected our upper airways means that when we talk, sneeze or cough, it spreads easily into the air and is therefore more easily transmitted. With the Andean virus, this virus actually infects very deep in the lungs. It does not usually affect the upper airways, so it is difficult to transmit from one person to another.

How do you know if you are infected with Andes virus? The symptoms appear to be largely nonspecific at first but quickly develop into serious illness.

People can start to develop symptoms anywhere from about five days or so after exposure up to six weeks, which again is very different from Covid and another reason why Hantavirus is of some concern but unlikely to cause a pandemic. It begins with very generalized symptoms. You can have fever, headache, fatigue, and muscle aches and pains. These types of symptoms are what you might get if you had the flu or many other types of infections.

Is Andes virus transmitted through the air?

Not exactly, because the way the virus spreads to your lungs is if you’re in close contact with someone for a long period of time. It’s not something like measles, where if you’re in a room and you have measles, someone can come into that room two hours later and still have measles. It is airborne, but Hantavirus is not.