the Texas Department of State Health Services says they are not showing any symptoms<\/a>.<\/p>\nOfficials say the two Texans were not sent to Nebraska because they left the ship last month before the virus was identified and had already returned home.<\/p>\n
KPRC 2\u2019s Re\u2019Chelle Turner spoke to Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and co-director of the Texas Children\u2019s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development about what Houstonians need to know.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, the initial exposure probably happened off-ship, and probably the initial infection occurred when a couple was in southern Argentina,\u201d Dr. Hotez said.<\/p>\n
Dr. Hotez says it\u2019s important to understand the incubation period \u2014 the time between when someone is exposed to the virus and when symptoms begin appearing.<\/p>\n
Hantavirus incubation period<\/p>\n
Symptoms typically appear about three weeks after exposure <\/p>\n
The incubation period can last up to six weeks <\/p>\n
Officials say the outbreak timeline dates back to late March and early April <\/p>\n
\u201cSo the likelihood is those two individuals who were in Texas who were exposed to the virus, I think there\u2019s a good likelihood they will not turn out to have the hantavirus infection,\u201d Dr. Hotez said. \u201cSo the point is, this is not COVID. It\u2019s not nearly as transmissible as COVID.\u201d<\/p>\n
Turner also asked Dr. Hotez whether families should be changing anything they\u2019re doing to protect themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere should be no fear in terms of getting hantavirus infection, at least from this epidemic,\u201d Dr. Hotez said. \u201cIf you are concerned, one of the things to recognize is that rodents, mice, rats, do transmit other virus infections. And so if you have these animals in your garage or in your home and you\u2019re sweeping up rodent feces or dry rodent urine and dust, you might want to wear a respirator mask and some glasses or goggles to protect yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Again, the two passengers from the Houston area are not experiencing any symptoms. State leaders are not releasing any additional details to protect their privacy.<\/p>\n
This is a developing story that Turner will continue following throughout the week. If you have questions or concerns you would like addressed, email me at rturner@kprc.com<\/a>.<\/p>\nCopyright 2026 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2013 Health leaders stress the risk of hantavirus to the general public remains very low, even as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[105910,104358,56,58,57,21764,38294,93769,45113],"class_list":["post-289167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-dr-peter-hotez","tag-hantavirus","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-rats","tag-rodents","tag-ship","tag-virus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}