WHO chief says hantavirus 'situation is stable for now'

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Sunday said the hantavirus “situation is stable for now.”

Tedros provided an update stating that WHO has reported 12 cases of hantavirus and three deaths, with no other confirmed deaths since May 2. The outbreak is believed to have originated from South America after infected travelers boarded the cruise ship MV Hondius earlier this month.

“All passengers and crew remain in quarantine and under close monitoring to ensure they receive care if needed,” Tedros wrote on the social platform X. “The situation is stable for now. We continue to remain vigilant and in close contact with all relevant governments.”

The update on the outbreak comes after Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Friday said he signed a targeted Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act declaration “to support the development and deployment of medical countermeasures related to the Andes virus” strain of hantavirus.

“This action helps remove barriers to research and response efforts while we continue monitoring the recent outbreak linked to the South Atlantic cruise ship,” Kennedy said in a statement posted to social media. “HHS is taking this situation seriously and will continue working to protect public health and support the safe development of potential treatments and countermeasures.”

Argentina’s Ministry of Health said a Dutch couple took part in a bird-watching tour that stopped at a garbage dump and they may have been exposed to infected rats. The couple, along with a German national, contracted the Andes strain and died.

Argentinian health officials said a team of scientific experts would be dispatched to investigate the origin of the outbreak, as the MV Hondius departed the country on April 1, the Associated Press previously reported.

Seventeen Americans and one British national exposed to hantavirus on the cruise ship were quarantined either in Nebraska or Georgia while health officials monitored them for symptoms. Most have not shown symptoms of hantavirus, though one person tested positive without being symptomatic, while another had mild symptoms but did not test positive.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said earlier this month that there were no cases of the Andes strain in the U.S.

Health officials regularly assured that the outbreak did not resemble the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and emphasized the differences between both viruses when it came to close-contact infection and the incubation period.

But an outbreak of the Ebola Bundibugyo virus disease, in which there are more than 500 suspected cases in the Congo alone, prompted the WHO to declare the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.