Photograph by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
Early Monday morning, a couple who traveled on the MV Hondius—the cruise ship with a rare and deadly hantavirus outbreak—were wheeled into Emory University Hospital’s Serious Communicable Diseases Unit. They wore full protective gear, including hoods and gowns, as did the health care workers who greeted them. Television helicopters hovered overhead, tracking their movements, from their climb down the steps of the charter plane to their arrival in ambulances at their temporary medical home.
Emory was prepared to battle the Andes virus, a type of hantavirus that causes severe respiratory illness and can be spread from person to person. Three people have died in the current outbreak, out of 10 cases linked to the Hondius.
Emory’s biocontainment unit has three intensive care rooms, and it’s designed to protect the staff and prevent any escape of dangerous pathogens. When two Ebola patients received treatment there in 2014, uneaten food or other solid waste was sanitized with pressurized steam in an autoclave then incinerated. Liquid waste was disinfected, and the air was filtered. The patients recovered, and no one else got Ebola.
This time, though, the concern about an American with a dangerous pathogen turned out to be a false alarm—at least for now. The Emory patient who was deemed “mildly symptomatic” at a medical check when the boat docked in the Canary Islands tested negative the day after they arrived at the biocontainment unit. Early hantavirus symptoms are vague and flulike—fever, fatigue, muscle aches, headache, chills, nausea or diarrhea, and dizziness.
No confirmed cases have been reported among the 41 Americans across the country being monitored by public health authorities, according to Jay Bhattacharya, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, who told reporters the threat of hantavirus spreading in the U.S. is “extremely low.”
And although public health officials have not disclosed the quarantining location of the two travelers who came to Emory, they are no longer in the facility meant for intensive medical care. Emory confirmed to Atlanta that the passengers were “safely discharged” on Friday.
Photograph by Chris McGrath/Getty Images
The two travelers are still being monitored by public health authorities, as are 16 others who came off the ship with them in the Canary Islands and are staying in a quarantine unit in Nebraska, seven (including two Georgia residents) who left the ship before the outbreak was detected, and others who shared a flight from St. Helena to Johannesburg with a woman from the ship who later died of hantavirus.
It can take as long as six weeks for someone exposed to Andes virus to become ill, a 42-day incubation period that is much longer than for most viruses. The CDC upgraded its hantavirus emergency guidance: While exposed travelers can monitor themselves at home and walk outdoors, “they should not enter any buildings, except their residence” unless it is a “life-threatening emergency or they are instructed by public health authorities.” They should isolate themselves within their home immediately if they develop any symptoms. The new guidelines call for public health officials to monitor the “high-risk contacts” twice a day, an increase from the prior guidance of once a day.
Nancy Nydam, director of communications for the Georgia Department of Public Health, gave Atlanta this update on the two travelers from Georgia who are quarantining at home after leaving the cruise in St. Helena:
“The two individuals who disembarked the cruise ship and returned home to Georgia remain asymptomatic. They are following CDC guidance for modified activity with home-based monitoring. DPH monitors them daily for fever, symptoms, and overall health. To respect patient privacy, this is all the information we can share.”
If one of the 41 Americans with potential exposure becomes ill, Emory’s Serious Communicable Diseases Unit may be called back into service. But for now, they had a great practice run for a future deadly outbreak.
