Over the past few days, more parts of the press have been reporting that the Hantavirus outbreak aboard the MV Hondius has spread beyond the boat, and that health authorities are ‘racing’ to track people who have been on board. ‘Why rat virus patients could become super-spreaders’ is the headline of one Telegraph article. ‘Superspreader fears’ is the caption of one image in the Sun. The Daily Express is even running a poll asking its readers ‘are you worried about the hantavirus cruise outbreak?’, a vote which they may have somewhat prejudiced by dubbing MV Hondius the ‘Horror Hantavirus cruise’ in another article published just yesterday. The Daily Mail has gone one further, alternatively calling MV Hondius the ‘Death Cruise’ and the ‘Doomed cruise’.
Some hyperbole, perhaps, but the ship is being refused by docks, and health authorities really are rushing to contact-tracing per the latest government press release. It’s all starting to feel a bit January 2020. Is Hantavirus likely to develop into another pandemic in the style of coronavirus? Are we on course for another lockdown?
The official position of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is that the risk of hantavirus to the public is very low. There are numerous reasons for this but the main reason is how the disease is transmitted.
There is only one strain of Hantavirus which we know can spread from person to person, the Andes strain of the illness. The Andes strain can only be spread through ‘very close contact’. That generally means things like sharing drinks, hugging and other things we would not normally do with strangers, at least not on a day-to-day basis (experiences may vary).
That means that the non-pharmaceutical interventions we saw during Covid, such as lockdown or ‘hands, face and space’ measures would have little impact on the transmission of the virus. And because the disease is so difficult to spread it is unlikely to develop into a full pandemic.
The need for ‘very close contact’ for human-to-human transmission is a characteristic that Hantavirus shares with Monkeypox. You may remember in May of 2022 there were many headlines about the spread of this illness. The Express as an example released a map showing where cases had been detected around the country, and then later ran headlines like ‘Monkeypox enters new horror phase as virus jumps to DOGS with WHO on alert’.
Monkeypox has indeed been a challenge, particularly in parts of Africa, but most people and indeed most dogs have been able to avoid the worst of it. There has actually been a surge in cases at the beginning of this year, but it hasn’t received much coverage, perhaps because the name of the illness no longer is no longer novel.
From what we know at this stage Hantavirus is, in some ways, more like Monkeypox than Coronavirus. A problem, but a manageable one, one that the vast majority of people will be able to avoid by keeping calm and carrying on. No doubt this will disappoint those of us who were looking forward to another spell of furlough. And you can forget about the banana bread as well.
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