In my last report on the hantavirus, I noted that 5 Americans who were not aboard the MV Hondius were being monitored for hantavirus exposure symptoms.
It appears now that a retired Bend doctor who helped care for passengers aboard the Durch cruise ship hit by the outbreak has now tested positive for the virus.
Fortunately for him, the symptoms are merely “strange but manageable.”
Stephen Kornfeld told CNN on May 12 he was being monitored inside a biocontainment unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, though he was not showing symptoms.The Oregon doctor said in the interview that the experience has been strange but manageable as he stays connected with family and friends through his phone while doctors continue monitoring his condition.Kornfeld said he briefly developed flu-like symptoms while treating sick passengers aboard the MV Hondius, but the illness quickly passed.
Meanwhile, a French woman is the third passenger to become critically ill with the Andes strain of hantavirus (the only one capable of human-to-human transmission).
Health officials around the world are monitoring disembarked travelers from the ship and any of their close contacts for symptoms of the virus. The World Health Organization said on Tuesday it had identified eleven cases of hantavirus, three in people who had died. It said nine of the cases were confirmed to be hantavirus and that two more were “probable.”Officials at a briefing on Wednesday in Stockholm by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control said that the patient in France was one of three people to be critically ill. Gianfranco Spiteri, an epidemic expert at the agency, said the woman did not have symptoms when she left the ship.Xavier Lescure, an infectious disease specialist at Bichat Hospital in Paris, where the woman is being treated, had previously said that she had severe symptoms and was breathing with the help of an artificial lung.
Meanwhile, 18 Americans who were aboard the ship are now enjoying an extended 42-day vacation… in federal quarantine.
All 18 U.S. passengers who were on board the MV Hondius cruise ship remain in federal quarantine as doctors and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figure out when they can safely go home.At a briefing Wednesday, the CDC said it is encouraging the passengers to stay in the quarantine until the end of the 42-day incubation period, which started on May 11, the day they disembarked from the cruise ship.The CDC’s Dr. David Fitter, incident manager for the agency’s hantavirus response, said they’re still in the process of interviewing each of the passengers to determine how closely they were exposed to the Andes hantavirus while on board the cruise ship. That process is expected to last at least through Thursday.“Currently, there are no state or federal quarantine orders that have been drawn,” Fitter said. “The goal is to work with them for the best possible place for them.”
While I suspect that there will be no new cases in the next 42 days, and I hope all those infected recover, it is apparent that not every public health official has picked up on the fact that the public is wary of their analysis.
For example, Brendan Jackson, an official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tossed out the “6 feet” precautions.
“We talking about exposure specifically to bodily fluids. And that could include things like saliva.So, if you are sharing eating utensils..kissing, touching…those sorts of things.It can also mean just being really, really close to that person for a fairly long period of time. So, we’re calling that ‘six feet’. At least six feet for a cumulative number of 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, Dr. David Berger, an Australian physician who is a former ship’s doctor for the same operator as the MV Hondius, asserts that assurances of a low risk to the general public are “calm mongering.”
“Well, maybe they are, but you’ve got a condition with an incubation period that appears to be up to six to eight weeks,” Berger said, noting that any control measures are going to look effective in the first few days of a hantavirus outbreak because it takes so long to show symptoms.“When you’ve known about this situation for four or five days, you can’t then go and say, ‘Oh, yes, all the measures are effective.’ … Any informed observer looks at that and goes, ‘Well, you’re just bullshitting, because you can’t absolutely say that,’ ” he added.Berger cites this as an example of what he and others have called “calm-mongering.”
If this episode proves anything, it’s that the real contagion may be institutional overconfidence colliding with public skepticism.
Between recycled “six feet” talking points, cautiously optimistic projections, and critics calling out “calm-mongering,” officials are walking a credibility tightrope they themselves frayed during COVID.
The good news is that cases remain limited and, so far, manageable. The next 42 days will test not just viral containment and media interest levels, but whether public health authorities can communicate real risk without sounding needlessly alarmist.
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