Hantavirus outbreak: Cruise ship passenger with symptoms at Emory tests negative for virus
A passenger believed to have been exposed to the hantavirus while aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship has tested negative for the virus while at Emory University Hospital.
In a post on X, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services confirmed that the symptomatic passenger “tested negative for the Andes variant of hantavirus.”
Two passengers were transported to Emory from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Monday morning after officials said one of them showed mild symptoms that could have been connected with the virus.
“It is because that one passenger was symptomatic, so that is the reason they went to the biocontainment unit at Emory… this is a system that exists for exactly this kind of scenario, and what you are seeing is the system working,” Matthew Ferreira, a Department of Health and Human Services employee, said during a press conference at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
Doctors work to transfer the two patients to Emory University Hospital’s Serious Communicable Diseases Unit.CBS News Atlanta
The other passenger who was taken to Emory remains under monitoring, but officials had said he or she did not show any symptoms.
The pair, who have been identified only as a couple by authorities, were part of a group of 18 Americans evacuated from the cruise ship on Monday. The others were taken to the University of Nebraska Medical Center, which has a federally funded quarantine facility and a biocontainment unit for treating people with highly infectious diseases.
The federal agency said that the 16 other Americans who arrived at the Nebraska hospital “currently remain asymptomatic.”
Doctors and health officials have emphasized that, though this strain of hantavirus can transmit from person to person, the risks of it spreading are extremely low.
“Hantavirus is a known virus. It is a known pathogen. And that helps us. We know what we’re doing, and we know how we’re responding. The system worked,” Dr. David Fitter, the director of the CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases’ division of global health, said at a press conference discussing the two patients on Monday.
It is likely that all the patients will remain in quarantine, either in their homes or at other facilities, for weeks to see if symptoms show.
