A hantavirus outbreak aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius has drawn global attention. According to the World Health Organization, there have been 11 cases of hantavirus in the ship's cluster, including three deaths, and the Andes strain has been identified as the culprit. It's the only hantavirus capable of spreading between humans.
Eighteen Americans have returned to the United States from the ship for monitoring and isolation. The Centers for Disease Control hasn't said how long it will keep the passengers in quarantine, but the Andes virus has an incubation period of 42 days.
Hantaviruses aren't new to the United States. Between 1993 and 2023, 35 Texans died of the disease, and nearly 900 cases were recorded nationwide. However, every single infection was contracted from rodents. The Sin Nombre strain, a hantavirus that circulates in western deer mice across the Southwest, has little to no ability to spread person-to-person.
So what happens now that a human-transmissible strain has potentially entered the same country? Is there a risk of reassortment, which occurs when two virus strains infect someone, swap DNA, and create a new strain? COVID-19 and influenza are both known for recombining in this way.
TPR Bioscience and Medicine reporter Bonnie Petrie spoke with infectious diseases expert Dr. Maximo Brito about all of this in a Petrie Dish news update. Brito says there is currently little cause for alarm. Hantaviruses mutate far more slowly than COVID or influenza, making reassortment between strains less likely. But less likely isn't impossible, and as climate change brings humans and wildlife into closer contact, Brito says there is a warning in this incident that we would do well to heed.
Guest: Dr. Maximo Brito, professor of infectious diseases at the University of Illinois in Chicago and the vice president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America
