90-Second Read: The system didn’t catch the Hantavirus threat. Biology saved us.

As of Monday, the World Health Organization had reported nine Hantavirus cases linked to the expedition cruise ship MV Hondius, with seven confirmed infections of the Andes strain and two probable infections. The first positive identification of Hantavirus infection among ship passengers was May 2, while the first death on the ship was April 11. Last year, Betsy Arakawa, wife of actor Gene Hackman, died from Hantavirus in her home in Santa Fe, briefly raising the alarm about a long-ignored threat. The cruise ship outbreak reveals how vulnerable the United States remains to infectious diseases despite lessons from COVID.

If there were an outbreak of the Andes strain in rural Nevada or even Washington, D.C., would health officials know? Passengers began falling ill weeks before Hantavirus was identified. The Trump administration has been making cuts over the past 15 months, not because health threats have diminished but because of its desire to undo the work of the Biden administration. By the time two laboratories confirmed the diagnosis, the passengers who carried the virus were already scattered across the globe.

Jha served as White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator under President Joe Biden and is a physician and public health researcher. North America has its own strain, Sin Nombre (or Unnamed in Spanish), which is not known to spread between people. An infected traveler with flu-like symptoms could spread it widely here before anyone suspects it. The gap Hantavirus is exposing is not about Hantavirus.

The CDC's National Wastewater Surveillance System covers 145 million Americans weekly, but it is geographically incomplete, concentrated in urban counties, and designed around detecting a small number of well-known pathogens. A ship that was turned away from port after port has now docked in Tenerife, and dozens of passengers are already home, having passed through airports before anyone knew what they carried. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has lost more than 3,000 staff in the past 15 months.