CDC addresses hantavirus pandemic fears after 'patient zero' identified

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have issued a message to the public as more than a dozen of the Americans who were trapped on a cruise ship with a deadly disease return to US soil.

At least one of the American passengers who disembarked on the island of Tenerife, Spain, for their return flight on Sunday night is known to have hantavirus. Two flew home in a biocontainment unit on the plane.

Authorities stated that this was due to 'an abundance of caution', with one person testing positive for the fatal virus and another showing mild symptoms. But with Covid ravaging the world so recently, some have expressed fears that this could spark a new pandemic.

The acting director of the CDC, Jay Bhattacharya, spoke to CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday to address people's concerns that returning passengers could cause an outbreak. The infectious diseases chief said: "This is not COVID, Jake, and we don't want to treat it like COVID."

The MV Hondius cruise ship has seen a number of passengers fall ill with hantavirus (Andres Gutierrez/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The current outbreak involves a handful of cases of individuals infected with a bug known as the Andes virus, the only form of this deadly hantavirus that can spread from animals to humans. Its fatality rate can be as high as 50 percent.

Bhattacharya went on to say: "We don't want to cause a public panic over this. We want to treat it with the hantavirus protocols that we - that, again, were successful in containing outbreaks in the past. And so we followed those protocols.

"This health alert is coming up because, again, there's this discrete event of the 17 arriving in the United States very, very soon. And so we just want to make sure that the medical community understands this."

The 17 Americans returning home from the plague stricken cruise ship will not be returning to their homes, instead, they will be flown directly to Nebraska and taken to the National Quarantine Unit for further assessment.

Each passenger was taken directly from the ship to a dedicated charter flight home (Lina Selg / AFP via Getty Images)

But with at least one active hantavirus case being flown into the US, Bhattacharya added a note of reassurance: "The key message I want to send to your audience is that this is not COVID. This is not going to lead to [that] kind of outbreak.

"We shouldn't be panicking when the evidence doesn't warrant it."

Not many of those worried by the outbreak understand exactly how the disease is spread and what puts someone at risk. "The risk is a high risk if they have been in close contact with somebody who was symptomatic," Bhattacharya explained.

Clarifying how the CDC will classify cases, he added: "If they weren't in close contact with someone who was symptomatic, then we're going to deem them a low risk. If they were in close contact, we're going to deem them a medium or high risk."

The first of the cruise ship passengers to be infected with this rare animal-human virus has been identified as Dutch man Leo Schilperoord, who had visited a remote rat-infested Argentinian landfill with his wife.

While the pair hoped to spot some rare Patagonian birds known to hang around the landfill site, sadly Schilperoord managed to become 'patient zero' after contracting the hantavirus from rodent droppings at the site.

The symptoms of the Andes strain of hantavirus and how it spreads

The Andes strain of hantavirus is very rare. Microbiologist Dr Gustavo Palacios told CNN there have only ever been 3,000 known cases.

It is the only documented form of hantavirus with human-to-human transmission. One study showed that window for patients to be infectious was about a day, when they develop a fever. But they also found it was transmissible through only brief proximity to an infected person.

Andes virus (ANDV) is primarily found in South America and has a high fatality rate, between 20 and 40 percent. It can cause hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS), which attacks the lungs.

Symptoms start one to eight weeks after infection and the first signs can include:

• Fatigue
• Fever
• Muscles aches
• Headaches
• Dizziness
• Chills
• Nausea and vomiting
• Diarrhoea

Later symptoms include:

• Coughing
• Shortness of breath