‘Risk to the public is low’: Professor breaks down Hantavirus as cruise ship passengers disembark

0:01 Professor of Epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

0:05 So welcome to Anne and as we have been reporting

0:08 American passengers will be heading to a quarantine facility in Nebraska.

0:12 But the health officials say they may not be facing a mandatory quarantine,

0:17 just monitoring about 42 days.

0:20 Can you explain the justification behind a decision like this?

0:23 Is it safe?

0:24 Well, thanks for having me, Alex.

0:28 And I think what's happening right now is

0:30 that those passengers are going to get to Nebraska,

0:32 which is this national quarantine unit,

0:34 which has really been built specifically for this purpose,

0:37 to be able to quarantine and isolate people who've been exposed

0:41 to an important pathogen like this and be able to provide care.

0:45 They're going to do a risk assessment.

0:47 That's what we've heard that's very,

0:49 very important because not everybody is going to have the exact

0:53 same risks of exposure to this pathogen on that ship.

0:57 And then they will work with them to figure out,

1:00 well, can they effectively quarantine at home?

1:02 Do they have all of the logistics to be able to do so?

1:05 Do they live in a multi-generational household?

1:08 Are they responsible for care for other people?

1:10 How exactly is this going to work?

1:12 So the likely scenario is that they're going to work out those details,

1:15 do a risk-based strategy and then determine what's

1:18 possible for that person based on that, knowing

1:21 that we do have the capacity to quarantine them at this place if needed.

1:26 So right now countries are racing to monitor people who

1:29 were previously on that ship or in contact with sick passengers.

1:34 What does it look like to monitor such a large volume of people?

1:38 I mean, how long could this process last?

1:41 Well, we've seen monitoring of people exposed to dangerous pathogens before.

1:46 We've seen this with Ebola.

1:47 We've seen this certainly with COVID-19.

1:49 We've seen it with many pathogens before.

1:51 So this is a standard public health protocol to do so.

1:54 People check in daily with their local public

1:56 health authorities in terms of symptoms and fever,

2:01 other things that they're looking for specifically as it relates to Hantavirus,

2:07 and it's over the period of incubation from the time

2:10 that they're exposed to the time when symptoms would potentially occur.

2:15 And so that here is around 42 days.

2:17 And so that's what's going to happen during

2:19 this time period until they're out of the clear.

2:23 So the World Health Organization, as you know,

2:25 is predicting a limited spread of the virus

2:27 if public health measures are enacted.

2:30 But first of all, how limited is limited?

2:32 Is it any cause to worry?

2:35 Well, I think it's important here to remember that this is not just binary.

2:39 It's not, is this serious and is it not serious?

2:43 And serious doesn't always mean pandemic threat.

2:46 So this is a very serious disease.

2:47 It's deadly.

2:49 And we know that it is spread person to person.

2:54 We've had the big organization,

2:56 the International Hantavirus Society really tell us what they know about it.

3:01 Always important to ask the people who know who've

3:03 been working on this virus for a long time.

3:06 And we do know that it can spread from person to person,

3:09 that there is some INCUBATION PERIOD AND THAT SPREAD

3:14 FROM PERSON TO PERSON CAN HAPPEN MOSTLY WITH CLOSE CONTACT,

3:18 BUT DEFINING THAT CLOSE CONTACT IS GOING TO BE CRITICAL.

3:23 WE CAN absolutely contain this thing.

3:26 We know that there's a long incubation period that actually works

3:29 in our favor because these people have mostly been contained on a ship.

3:32 We know most of the flight manifests.

3:33 We know how to get in touch with people who've been closely associated.

3:37 So I think risk to the public is low.

3:39 Risk to those people who've been directly in contact with cases is very high.

3:45 And frankly, multiple officials and medical

3:47 experts have cautioned against panicking.

3:50 They're assuring people this is not another COVID pandemic.

3:53 Take a listen.

3:56 The key message I want to send to your audience is that this is not COVID.

4:00 This is not going to have lead to the kind of outbreak.

4:03 I do understand that this is not a respiratory disease,

4:06 meaning it's very difficult if impossible to pass through coughing or breathing.

4:12 It's very rare to see it transmitted between between humans.

4:17 And so far, people in several countries are being tested

4:21 or monitored after possibly being in contact with that virus.

4:24 So the French prime minister has just said one One

4:27 of the five French passengers showed symptoms during a repatriation flight.

4:31 So how different is this than COVID?

4:34 And is there an advantage to knowing how

4:36 to identify hantavirus at this early stage compared to, say,

4:40 the early days of COVID when it was kind of, I mean, virtually unknown.

4:45 Well, Alex, you hit on the most important point here.

4:47 When we dealt with COVID,

4:48 we had a completely novel pathogen, something we'd never seen before.

4:52 We didn't have diagnostics.

4:54 We didn't really know anything about incubation period.

4:56 We didn't know anything about symptoms.

4:58 We didn't really understand how it spread, so we started from zero.

5:02 This is not the case.

5:03 We know something about this pathogen.

5:06 Could we learn more?

5:08 Absolutely.

5:09 But do we have the tools to be able to contain it and get in front of it?

5:12 Yes, we do.

5:14 So I think that, again,

5:14 it's important to remember it can be low risk for the general public,

5:19 not necessarily a pandemic risk,

5:21 but a very serious public health issue that needs to be addressed

5:24 and to throw all the tools that we have at it to keep it contained.

5:29 All right.

5:30 I thank you, Anne Ramoyne, for your expertise in weighing in and calming

5:32 down anybody who might be a little concerned.

5:35 Appreciate all that new efforts by the Trump administration to fight