Acting CDC Director on Hantavirus: ‘This Is Not COVID’
- On Sunday, the cruise ship MV Hondius docked in Tenerife, Spain, with 140 passengers on board as Acting CDC Director Jay Bhattacharya sought to calm public fears, stating: "This is not Covid."
- The outbreak originated last month when a 70-year-old Dutch passenger fell ill while traveling from Argentina to Antarctica, resulting in three deaths and five illnesses spread via inhaled rodent droppings.
- Seventeen Americans remaining on the vessel will travel to Omaha, Nebraska, for monitoring, while seven others who disembarked last month returned to Arizona, California, Georgia, Texas, and Virginia without symptoms.
- The CDC deployed epidemiologists to the Canary Islands to conduct exposure risk assessments for each passenger, maintaining direct communication with Americans on board for consular assistance.
- Bhattacharya emphasized the agency will use established hantavirus protocols rather than COVID-19 measures to avoid public panic, stating: "We want to treat it with our hantavirus protocols that were successful at containing outbreaks in the past.
19 Articles
19 Articles
American passengers evacuated from the cruise ship affected by a deadly outbreak of hantavirus will not necessarily be quarantined, said a senior health department official on Sunday. Jay Bhattacharya, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), asked the American public to calm down regarding the hantavirus. "That's not COVID," he said on Sunday (10), in CNN's "State of the Union" program. Washington announced on Fr…
Acting CDC Director Responds to Criticism Over Government’s Hantavirus Response
UNITED STATES - MARCH 5: Jayanta Bhattacharya, nominee to serve as Director of the National Institutes of Health, prepares to tesify during his confirmation hearing in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Wednesday, March 5, 2025. Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via APActing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Jay Bhattacharya on Sunday downplayed the severity of a hantavirus…
CDC attempts to stop panic over Hantavirus outbreak on cruise ship
According to a report from the Daily Mail, U.S. health officials have responded to growing public anxiety following a deadly hantavirus outbreak on a luxury cruise ship, issuing a health alert while emphasizing that the risk of widespread transmission remains low. The incident centers on the MV Hondius, which has been at the heart of […]
Acting CDC Director Says Hantavirus Outbreak ‘Is Not COVID’
The acting head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on May 10 that a hantavirus outbreak on a Dutch cruise ship “is not COVID,” suggesting that the virus, which normally spreads via rodents, won’t cause a pandemic. “The key message I want to send to your audience is that this is not COVID, this is not going to have—lead to the kind of outbreak,” acting CDC Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya told CNN’s “State of the Union…
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