A cruise ship is stranded off the coast of West Africa after a suspected hantavirus outbreak. The vessel departed Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1 and followed an itinerary across the South Atlantic, with stops including Antarctica, South Georgia, and several remote islands. As of May 4, seven cases have been identified, including three deaths, one critically ill patient, and three individuals with mild symptoms. Here is what you need to know, based on information from the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control, the Mayo Clinic and the American Lung Association.
What is hantavirus?
Hantaviruses are viruses that naturally infect rodents and are occasionally transmitted to humans. Infection can result in severe illness or death.
How do you get it?
Usually, transmission occurs through contact with contaminated urine, droppings, or saliva of infected rodents. Activities that involve contact with rodents, such as cleaning enclosed or poorly ventilated spaces, farming, forestry work, and sleeping in rodent-infested dwellings, increase exposure risk. You do not need to see a rodent to be at risk. Many people who become ill with hantavirus say they did not see rodents or rodent droppings.
Can it spread person to person?
Mostly no, but there is one important exception. To date, human-to-human transmission has been documented only for Andes virus in the Americas. When it occurs, transmission has been associated with close and prolonged contact, particularly among household members or intimate partners, and appears most likely during the early phase of illness. This is why the cruise ship outbreak is drawing attention, since the Andes virus is linked to the infections from the ship.
What are the symptoms?
Early symptoms can include fatigue, fever, and muscle aches, especially in the large muscle groups like the thighs, hips, back, and sometimes shoulders. About half of all patients also experience headaches, dizziness, chills, and abdominal problems like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain. Things can escalate fast. Four to ten days after the initial phase of illness, late symptoms appear, including coughing and shortness of breath, as the lungs fill with fluid.
How deadly is it?
It depends on the strain. Hantavirus infections are associated with a case fatality rate of under 1 to 15 percent in Asia and Europe and up to 50 percent in the Americas.
Is there a treatment or vaccine?
There is no licensed specific antiviral treatment or vaccine for hantavirus infection. Care is supportive and focuses on close monitoring and management of respiratory, cardiac, and kidney complications. Getting to a hospital fast matters enormously with these infections.
Should I be worried?
WHO currently assesses the risk to the global population from this event as low. Hantavirus infections are not considered a significant risk to the public because of how rare they are and how rarely the virus spreads from person to person.
How do I protect myself?
Effective prevention measures include keeping homes and workplaces clean, sealing openings that allow rodents to enter buildings, storing food securely, and avoiding dry sweeping or vacuuming rodent droppings. Dampening contaminated areas before cleaning is recommended.
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