The World Health Organisation moved on Thursday to contain mounting public anxiety over a hantavirus outbreak aboard a cruise ship, saying the situation, while serious, bears no resemblance to the early stages of a pandemic, and that the pathogen involved is fundamentally unlike the viruses that cause global health crises.
Three passengers have died and eight people, five confirmed and three suspected, have fallen ill aboard the Dutch vessel MV Hondius, which set sail from Argentina early last month on a route toward Antarctica before crossing the Atlantic.
The ship is currently making its way toward the Canary Islands.
At a press conference in Geneva on Thursday, Maria van Kerkhove, the WHO's director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness, was direct. "This is not SARS-CoV-2 and not the start of a COVID pandemic," she said.
"It spreads very, very differently."
The strain of hantavirus involved is the Andes virus, found primarily in South America and specifically linked to Argentina, the ship's point of departure.
It is the only known form of hantavirus capable of spreading from person to person, which is what initially triggered alarm.
But health experts have been at pains to explain why that characteristic does not make it a pandemic risk: transmission requires close and prolonged contact, of the kind associated with household members, intimate partners, or people providing direct medical care.
It does not spread through the air in the way that respiratory viruses do.
Countries Trace Contacts
Health authorities in more than a dozen countries are nonetheless conducting contact-tracing efforts, as former passengers have dispersed across the world since the voyage.
One case was confirmed in Switzerland after a passenger was notified by the cruise company and tested positive at a local hospital. A Dutch flight attendant is also being tested, after one of the victims boarded a flight shortly before her death.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the overall public health risk from the outbreak remains low, and that the contact-tracing effort now underway reflects standard practice for a contained outbreak rather than evidence of a widening threat.
