Hantaviruses remain on the minds of New York-area residents after a deadly outbreak aboard a foreign cruise ship and a suspected new infection in the Finger Lakes region.
A rare strain of hantavirus has been blamed for the deaths of three passengers aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius, which disembarked from Argentina last month. That outbreak sparked quarantines and monitoring of New York and New Jersey area residents who were passengers aboard the cruise ship or had contact with those who were.
More worries worries surfaced on Thursday, with reports of a suspected hantavirus case in Ontario County, New York, though public health officials said there was no link between that case and the cruise ship infections, multiple local media outlets reported.
Dr. Marcus Pereira, medical director of the Transplant Infectious Diseases Program at NewYork-Presbyterian and Columbia University Irving Medical Center, joined All Things Considered earlier this week to discuss the hantavirus with host Sean Carlson.
A transcript of their conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below:
Dr. Pereira, how worried should New Yorkers be about this hantavirus outbreak?
I think for the majority of people, the concern should be very low. Most of the individuals who were exposed to this virus — whether they were passengers on that cruise ship or were otherwise exposed — were identified and are being monitored. So for the general individual living in New York, whether it’s the city or the state, the potential for exposure is extremely low.
What makes this particular strain of hantavirus different?
This particular strain, the Andes virus, is the one strain that is capable of human-to-human transmission. But even in the setting aboard the cruise ship, from what we understand, the contagiousness of the virus is generally very low. But that class of the hantavirus can cause some severe disease in humans, and people have already died from contracting this virus. So if you do catch it, there’s a high fatality rate, and you can get very sick very quickly from it.
In the past couple years, unfortunately, we’ve become really familiar with COVID, the flu, and how those viruses are transmitted. How is hantavirus transmission different from, say, COVID or the flu?
For influenza and SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID), I think we learned very quickly that it takes a very minimum amount of exposure for that virus to spread to other individuals. I think what we’re learning from this virus is, perhaps it’s a little bit more difficult, but again, there’s lots that we don’t know, and we hope that remains true.
Now, you mentioned that the risk to the general public in New York is low, but this being a virus that is transmitted largely by rodents, I think a lot of people who live in New York say, “You know, I see rats every single day in New York City.” So why aren’t hantavirus outbreaks more common in a densely populated place like this city?
It certainly crossed my mind as well. But just to be clear, the virus that we are talking about in this outbreak is a different strain of the virus than is naturally occurring here in the United States, certainly in the four corners of the country and even in parts of New York state. Luckily exposure (via rodent urine or droppings) doesn’t happen often. And obviously, not every animal is infected with that virus. So I think the likelihood is very low. And luckily, there’s been only sporadic cases over the many decades in our region.
If somebody is infected, what does treatment look like?
There are no antiviral medications or any other sort of approved therapies, unfortunately. The treatment would be coming to the hospital and being in an isolated room and being monitored very closely. Some of these patients will deteriorate rapidly. They do need ICU-level care, whether it’s intubation or more specialized forms of mechanical support to get them through the worst part of the infection.