Suspected outbreak of Hantavirus kills 3 on cruise ship

0:00 Joining us, epidemiologi and infectious disease specialist Anne Ramoynyne.

0:04 She is a professor and director of the Center

0:07 for Global Health Security at UCLA's Fielding School for Public Health.

0:10 Ann, it's really good to see you.

0:11 It's been a minute.

0:14 What should we make of this cruise ship

0:17 and the infections and the deaths and the potential transmission?

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

0:26 And, you know, I think that this is a very important and complicated moment.

0:31 When you ask me what should we make of it,

0:33 You know, we live in an interconnected world where infections that emerge,

0:38 in particular at this animal-human interface,

0:41 can quickly become an international public health event,

0:45 especially when travel is involved.

0:47 You know, a cruise ship is a contained environment,

0:51 but we know that diseases can spread very quickly on a cruise ship.

0:56 So it's a very complicated situation that's

0:58 going to involve a lot of different jurisdictions,

1:03 a lot of good public health epidemiology

1:09 and outbreak investigation that's going to span continents.

1:13 Can you quarantine effectively?

1:14 I know a lot of people, when they see this, they have PTSD from COVID

1:18 and the cruise ships in the initial stages of COVID.

1:22 So can you effectively quarantine and get these people off the ships,

1:25 but also keep this from spreading?

1:28 Absolutely.

1:29 I want to make it really clear.

1:31 This is not another COVID that we're looking at.

1:34 This is a hantavirus.

1:36 Hantaviruses are very different.

1:40 Most hantaviruses are really spread from contact

1:45 with rodent urine and saliva and droppings.

1:49 The Andes hantavirus, which is implicated here,

1:52 does have some evidence of being able to be spread from person to person.

1:57 But it seems that this is a very unusual and very

2:02 specific circumstance where you had people who were infected in potentially,

2:07 as we assume at this point, because we don't have all the information.

2:12 In Argentina, we're on the ship and certainly with close contact on a ship,

2:19 you can imagine that there would be opportunities for spread.

2:23 The question is, how easily does it spread?

2:26 What are the mechanisms,

2:27 and where are all the other people who got off the ship already?

2:34 And I think that those pieces are coming together very quickly.

2:37 But I really want to emphasize that this is not

2:42 a typically respiratory pathogen that we think of with COVID.

2:46 AMNA NAWAZ, So why all the extreme care being taken if

2:50 it's not a COVID and if it is something that is,

2:53 it should be easier to track because of the transmission?

2:57 Why are these folks still trapped on the ship?

3:02 Well, you know, low public risk does not mean

3:04 low consequence for the people that are on that ship.

3:07 I think that that's really important for us to understand,

3:09 and you also have to understand we need to be able to talk about

3:13 things like these, an incident like

3:15 this where we're seeing disease spillover, people affected.

3:20 It's certainly dramatic for the people on the ship.

3:23 We need to be able to talk about these things and to be able to get

3:26 to the bottom of them and understand that we

3:29 should be concerned but not necessarily panicked here.

3:32 This is where public health

3:33 and public health coordination globally really matters.

3:37 You know, we do have outbreaks happen all the time.

3:41 It's just a matter of how quickly we can get in front of them.

3:44 And what we understand what's happening.

3:46 That's why disease surveillance,

3:48 that's why public health and global public health is so critical.

3:52 Should we be concerned about what happened at the CDC?

3:55 It shuttered its vessel sanitation program

3:57 as of the cruise ship inspectors, you know,

4:00 getting rid of the agencies who normally

4:03 would be investigating and tracking this stuff.

4:06 Should that worry us?

4:07 Well, of course.

4:08 I mean, we are less prepared for an event

4:12 just like this when we weaken our public health infrastructure.

4:16 I mean, this is exactly the kind

4:19 of scenario that the CDC program was funded for.

4:24 It's the exact scenario that our public health departments are funded

4:29 for and why science related to infectious diseases is so critical.

4:35 You know, I as you know,

4:36 I work in emerging infectious diseases and this is a perfect example.

4:41 You know, we have a little bit of data on this particular Andes virus,

4:46 but it's not extensive.

4:47 And it's not because people aren't interested,

4:50 but it's just that funding for this kind of work is not plentiful.

4:58 And so we work with the information that we have.

5:04 And then when we have a big event like this, this is when the information

5:08 speeds up because all of a sudden we have a reason to do so.

5:11 All right.

5:12 Dr.

5:12 Ann Ramoyne, epidemiologist,

5:14 thank you as always for being here and it's really good to see you.

5:16 It's been a minute.