READING, Pa. \u2013 A rare virus linked to a cruise ship off South America is drawing global attention, but health officials say the risk to the public remains low.<\/p>\n
The virus is called the Andes virus, a rare type of hantavirus found in South America.<\/p>\n
\u201cHantaviruses are a group of viruses carried by rodents that can cause severe disease in humans,\u201d said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization.<\/p>\n
According to the World Health Organization, this is not like COVID. It does not spread easily through the air and typically requires close, prolonged contact between people.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we do know is that the Andes virus, in previous outbreaks, there has been instances of human-to-human transmission, mainly among close contacts,\u201d said Dr.\u00a0Maria Van Kerkhove, acting director of epidemic and pandemic management at WHO. \u201cEither people providing clinical care or people who have close physical contact.\u201d<\/p>\n
So what happened here?<\/p>\n
It all started April 1, when the cruise ship MV Hondius left Ushuaia, Argentina. Days later, a passenger got sick. By April 11, that passenger had died onboard.<\/p>\n
Then, more cases followed. His wife later died after leaving the ship. Another passenger had to be evacuated. By early May, another person died onboard.<\/p>\n
In total, health officials say eight people got sick and three died. Dozens of passengers who got off the ship are now being tracked as the cruise continues on its way toward Spain.<\/p>\n
\u201cBased on the risk assessment that we have, the risk to the people in the Canary Islands is actually low,\u201d Ghebreyesus said. \u201cThe ship is now sailing to Canary Islands, and I hope all the support will be provided.\u201d<\/p>\n
Back in Pennsylvania, there are no reported cases. State health officials say no one is being monitored at this time, and they continue to assess the situation as low risk for the general public.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013 A rare virus linked to a cruise ship off South America is drawing global attention,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[83407,46312,2702,67072,83409,42687,28,30,29,9235],"class_list":["post-187794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-andes-virus","tag-canary-islands","tag-cruise-ship","tag-epidemic","tag-hantavirus","tag-infectious-disease","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-world-health-organization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}