Hantavirus-Hit Cruise Ship Begins Evacuation in Canary Islands

0:00 Let's pick up from what we just heard there.

0:01 What we expect to happen here over these next few hours,

0:04 it sounds like many countries are marshaling,

0:07 aircraft to the Canary Islands to bring

0:10 their citizens back to their respective countries.

0:11 Perhaps you can just take the The US as an example here.

0:14 What's gonna happen here over the next twenty four to thirty six hours?

0:18 Well, thank you, for having me.

0:19 The first thing is that, you know, fortunately,

0:21 what we hear is that the passengers

0:23 that are being disembarked are all asymptomatic.

0:25 In other words, they don't have any symptoms of hantavirus,

0:27 which means maybe they're not infected yet.

0:29 We don't know.

0:30 They could still have been infected

0:32 and they're gonna have developed symptoms later.

0:33 So the first thing that's gonna happen

0:35 is all passengers will undergo a health screening.

0:37 They're gonna be, you know, questioned.

0:39 They're gonna have physical exams.

0:40 They may draw some blood.

0:41 And then after they decide whether they're truly asymptomatic or not,

0:44 they'll put them on a plane and the American citizens are gonna

0:47 come over to the serious communicable

0:49 disease unit at the University of Nebraska, which is fairly large.

0:53 And they're gonna be then processed again over there.

0:55 And if they happen to be symptomatic,

0:58 if there's anything that is suggest suggestions of infection,

1:01 they'll be kept in isolation.

1:03 Otherwise, if they still continue to be asymptomatic, they'll be,

1:06 sent home and and encouraged to to to quarantine

1:08 and to wash themselves for the next six to eight weeks.

1:11 Doctor, I wanna ask you how this spreads because,

1:15 I know that it is usually something that you you get

1:18 by coming into contact with animal droppings that have this virus.

1:21 It is not usually spread from person to person, or there can be.

1:25 Prevailing wisdom is that if you get it from person to person,

1:27 you have to be in very close contact.

1:29 Some of the reports we're seeing from the ship

1:31 is that not all of these individuals who have,

1:33 tested positive for this virus were in close enough contact

1:36 that virologists would usually assume they

1:38 were susceptible to contracting the virus.

1:40 I know this is a different strain than we have here in The US,

1:43 and that is more possible.

1:44 But is that concerning that this seems to be

1:47 a method of transmission that this this virus doesn't usually take?

1:50 No.

1:50 It actually does.

1:51 This this anti hantavirus is the only one that's spread person to person.

1:55 And there was an outbreak in Argentina in 2018,

1:58 2019 where some of the things that you're mentioning actually happened.

2:01 Some person just got infected because they were in the same room

2:04 with another person that was infected or they were in the same bathroom.

2:07 It is very clear that if you have very close intimate contact,

2:10 for example, in this case, the index case and his wife got infected,

2:14 they were in the same cabin, they could have been, you know, intimate sexually.

2:17 There's a lot of reasons why the wife

2:20 got infected so quickly and and then develop symptoms.

2:22 But that doesn't mean, you know, it's an all or none phenomena.

2:26 Clearly, there's there's a lot of things

2:28 about the transmission we don't fully understand.

2:31 And I think this this outbreak is gonna help us try to understand that.

2:34 It is very clear that the closer you are,

2:36 the more intimate the contact, the more likely you are to to get infected.

2:40 But that doesn't mean that we have not seen sort

2:42 of what appears to be fairly casual mechanisms of infection.

2:47 I'm curious about the global public health apparatus

2:49 that's being marshaled to bear here, in Tenerife.

2:52 So The United States has pulled out of the World Health Organization.

2:55 That's something that's changed since the COVID nineteen pandemic.

2:57 And I wonder what the consequences are to that, as you see them,

3:01 as we watch this this effort unfold,

3:03 and and what we can learn from this experience.

3:05 Yes.

3:06 This may not lead to the kind of global

3:07 pandemic that we saw with with COVID nineteen,

3:09 but what can we learn from the way that governments

3:12 respond to to this crisis that's breaking out on this ship?

3:15 Well, you know, first of all,

3:16 wanna say that the World Health Organization has really done a remarkable job,

3:20 starting with their director general, doctor Tedros,

3:22 and then the rest of the WHO team, Maria van Kerh Haoven and her team.

3:26 They've done a tremendous job.

3:28 You know, doctor Tedros is there and site in Tenerife

3:31 helping and and providing leadership and talking to the Spanish

3:34 government and ensuring that the boat was able to dock

3:36 over there and the passengers can be safely and securely disembarked.

3:40 I think we have seen a a much diminished CDC.

3:44 If you think about a a prior outbreak, let's think the outbreak of Ebola.

3:49 CDC very quickly was involved very CDC very quickly sent a team over there.

3:53 CDC was providing something very important, which is technical assistance.

3:56 We're not seeing a lot of technical assistance happening from CDC right now.

4:00 In fact, it almost seems like the CDC response occurred after many, many days.

4:05 It was almost, you know, too late, too little, too late.

4:08 And that's unfortunate because, you know, we need a strong CDC.

4:12 As American citizens, we want a strong CDC.

4:14 We want a CDC that's a leader in global health,

4:17 not only nationally, but but globally.

4:19 And and to see such a diminished CDC to me as an infectious

4:23 disease physician as a public health expert is is actually quite painful.

4:27 And that seems, to compound the concern.

4:28 People really are stressed about this.

4:30 We were talking yesterday about how we've literally heard

4:32 people on the street in Manhattan talking about it.

4:35 And then the WHO director, doctor Tedros,

4:37 was was talking about the concern of a wider spread of this virus.

4:41 I want you to listen to what he said.

4:43 The concern is, legitimate because we have

4:48 all experience because of COVID, especially in 2020.

4:54 And that trauma is still in our minds.

4:58 So people will have questions.

5:00 People will have concerns.

5:02 And that's what I try to address in my message to the people of Tenerife.

5:06 We we hear you.

5:07 We understand, but the situation is much better now.

5:13 How worried should people be that this is not an isolated outbreak?

5:17 I think about this one, I would not be worried.

5:20 I agree with doctor Tedros.

5:21 I think there's still a lot of trauma left from COVID,

5:24 but I would say don't be worried.

5:25 But this is not the first outbreak.

5:27 This is not the last outbreak.

5:28 What are we worried about is that we

5:30 will continue to see this kind of outbreaks.

5:32 We are continuing to have outbreaks like this one.

5:34 Believe me, a hand of ours in a cruise ship was not

5:37 in my bingo card of things that was gonna happen in a cruise ship,

5:39 and yet it happened.

5:40 So we're gonna see more things like this one.

5:43 And what people in The US need

5:44 to be worried about is our public health infrastructure.

5:47 They need to be worried about weakened CDC.

5:49 The CDC has been significantly diminished in in relevance,

5:52 and a lot of people have left.

5:54 A lot expertise have left CDC.

5:56 So I would say that what we need to ask for and what we need to be worried about

6:00 is the state of our public health and global

6:02 health expertise in our country rather than the specific outbreak.