“It’s not COVID. It’s not the flu. It spreads very, very differently,” Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s acting director for epidemics and pandemics, stressed at a press briefing on Thursday.
Michael Marks, an infectious disease specialist and professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said in a statement on Thursday that given the nature of this virus and the precautions and monitoring already in place, “the risk of spread to the general public is extremely low.”
The comments resonate palliative risk assessment Even if the disease did spread from passengers evacuated from the ship, the virus “is unlikely to cause many cases in the community or a widespread outbreak if infection prevention and control measures are in place because it is not easily transmitted,” the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control said Wednesday.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also deemed the risk to the American public “extremely low” in a brief statement on Tuesday.
So why are infectious disease experts and public health officials so confident that this will not become another global health crisis?
Here’s what we know about this virus and the outbreak
Hantaviruses
The shipborne virus is a member of the large hantavirus family that is distributed worldwide. They are enveloped, negative-stranded RNA viruses whose genomes consist of three segments.
Literally Old world hantaviruses (including Hantaan, Seoul, Puumala and Dobrava-Belgrade) are found in Africa, Asia and Europe with active points of activity in China, Korea, Russia and some European countries. The first awareness of these viruses dates back to the 1950s, when soldiers fighting in the Korean War contracted the disease. These viruses cause hemorrhagic fever, a renal syndrome (HFRS) characterized by fever, bleeding, and kidney damage. Mortality rates range from about 1 to 15 percent, depending on the specific hantavirus.
