JONATHAN M. METSCH, Dr.P.H. – Tracking Emerging Public Health Challenges – May 13, 2016 – Hantavirus
“We know fairly little about the Andes strain of the hantavirus, with an estimated 3,000 human cases over three decades. How could that assertion about it not being easy to spread be true given what we know about the 2018 superspreading event?
I reached out to Gustavo Palacios, the senior author of the study about the Epuyén outbreak. He seemed as baffled by these pronouncements as I was. He told me that the paper he and his fellow researchers wrote used the phrase prolonged or close contact but he explained that, as they had written in their article, they didn’t mean solely physical or bodily contact. He told me that they believed that the virus spread via respiratory secretions. Looking at the same study, an airborne transmission expert, Linsey Marr, told CBC/Radio Canada that “it’s strongly suggestive that airborne transmission is happening.”
Dr. Palacios also said that he and his co-authors had calculated the median reproduction number of the Andes virus to be 2.1 — meaning that one sick person infected about two other people. That’s more than enough for sustained human transmission. That reproduction number is not much lower than the initial strain of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, as calculated in February and March of 2020, by the way, so I’m not feeling great about the reassurances from health officials that this will not become a pandemic. How do they know?
Dr. Palacios was also worried about the differences between the previous Andes strain outbreak setting and the current one. Containing an outbreak in a tiny isolated rural village in Patagonia, Argentina, during the dry season is a different prospect than containing one on a cruise ship with ocean humidity conditions or with people traveling onward in planes.”At the same time, authorities keep insisting that only symptomatic people can spread the virus. In Dr. Palacios’s study, the transmission events that the researchers could trace had indeed occurred while people were displaying symptoms. But he’s also said that 48 hours before the onset of symptoms should be considered a high-risk period as well. He told me that people’s viral loads rise before symptoms break out, so it’s reasonable to assume there is some risk earlier. Besides, with a single study done after the fact, he and his team hadn’t been able to pinpoint every exact moment that a person passed the virus to another — many unknowns remained from that outbreak.
The last twist was that his paper shows that the incubation period (the time between virus exposure and symptoms) can be as long as 40 days. Some people get sick more than a month after being exposed, which is an unusually long stretch of time. That’s a big deal because it makes managing the outbreak much more challenging.” (1)
“A French woman who contracted hantavirus while onboard the MV Hondius cruise ship is now critically ill, and relying on an artificial lung, a doctor treating her says.
The woman, whose identity has not been made public, was a passenger on the MV Hondius cruise ship that left Argentina on April 1 for the Canary Islands. A hantavirus outbreak on the vessel has now led to three deaths and multiple hospitalizations across several countries.
In an update on Tuesday, May 12, a doctor at the Paris hospital where the woman is being treated said she is critically ill and using an artificial lung, per the Associated Press.
On Tuesday, Dr. Xavier Lescure, an infectious disease specialist at Bichat–Claude Bernard Hospital, told the outlet that the woman’s severe complications from hantavirus have led to life-threatening lung and heart problems during “the final stage of supportive care.”” (2)
“A total of 11 people around the world have had either confirmed or suspected cases of hantavirus tied to the cruise outbreak, World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a Tuesday news conference. The number includes the three people who have died from their infections.
Ghebreyesus said there may be more cases of hantavirus than the initial count due to interactions between passengers before the first cases were confirmed.
“The incubation period is also six to eight weeks. So, because of the interaction while they were still in the ship, especially before they started taking some infectious prevention measures… we would expect more cases,” he said.”” (3)
1.A New Viral Outbreak. The Same Mistakes All Over Again., By Zeynep Tufekci, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/opinion/hantavirus-complacency.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
2.Woman Diagnosed With Hantavirus After Being on Cruise Ship Now on an Artificial Lung in ‘Final Stage of Supportive Care,’ Doctor Says, By Angel Saunders, https://people.com/woman-diagnosed-with-hantavirus-after-being-on-cruise-ship-now-on-an-artificial-lung-in-final-stage-supportive-care-doctor-says-11973475
3.Fourteen states monitoring possible hantavirus exposures, https://www.king5.com/video/news/health/fourteen-states-monitoring-possible-hantavirus-exposures/281-87896928-6f23-41fe-9a10-624412f3ca16