90-Second Read: Osterholm on Hantavirus: We’re missing ‘main point of this outbreak’

In 1996 there was an outbreak involving 16 people, in 2002 we saw an outbreak with 13 linked cases, and there were three linked cases in 2014. Michael Osterholm: There have been over 100 cases of Hantavirus in Argentina this past year and no reports of person-to-person transmission. Public health staff from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will meet passengers in Tenerife, Spain as they deboard a cruise ship that has been at the center of a Hantavirus outbreak. We have a model for that with SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome] and MERS [Middle East respiratory syndrome], a handful of cases who really drove the activity in a given outbreak.

Right now, every person in quarantine from this outbreak is being treated like they are a superspreader who brought it on the ship. Michael Osterholm: From an HVAC [heating, ventilation, and air condition] standpoint, a cold-water cruise ship is all about keeping the ship warm. To me, it points out that there's not going to be a lot of additional cases from ship exposure. The agency said it is monitoring 41 people for the virus, at least 18 of whom are being quarantined in biocontainment units.

Today, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that no Americans have been sickened so far in this outbreak. First of all, respiratory person-to-person transmission is not new with the Andes Hantavirus. We have at least three other outbreaks in Argentina since 1996 that show person-to-person transmission. From a standpoint of transmission, every person does not pose the same risk, and that point has been missed.

CIDRAP News: There's been some talk about possible asymptomatic transmission in this outbreak; what's your take? Michael Osterholm: We don't know; maybe it could happen in the first 24 hours before symptom onset. We know the original infected patient got on the ship around 30 days ago, and, based on when he got on the ship and when he died, he would likely have been transmitting the virus in his first week on the ship.