UN health agency chief says hantavirus outbreak shows why US should rejoin

The head of the World Health Organization said Thursday he hoped an outbreak of the deadly hantavirus would prompt the Trump administration to reconsider its decision to leave the United Nations agency.

The outbreak aboard the cruise liner MV Hondius is now believed to have killed three and infected five. U.S. health officials are monitoring Americans who disembarked the trip last month and returned home after the first death.

The Andes strain of the virus, which is carried by rodents, is capable of spreading between people. Health authorities suspect the first victims, a Dutch couple, may have contracted that strain on a bird watching trip in South America before boarding the ship in Argentina on April 1.

Argentina had withdrawn from the WHO two weeks before, following the U.S. withdrawal in January. President Donald Trump said he was pulling out because he believed the agency had mishandled the Covid pandemic, among other issues.

WHO officials said Thursday that it’s nonetheless working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in responding to the outbreak. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he hoped Argentina and the U.S. would “see how important universality is for health security.”

Another WHO official, Director of Health Emergency Alert and Response Abdi Rahman Mahamud, said the CDC and WHO were working together to draft recommendations for governments as passengers leave the ship and come home.

Tedros said people from 12 countries, including the U.S., Canada, Germany and the U.K., had left the ship on St. Helena island in the south Atlantic ocean. About 140 remain and are en route to the Canary Islands, a Spanish territory off the coast of Morocco, where they are expected to disembark.

The state health departments of Arizona, California, Georgia, Texas and Virginia said that passengers who were on the cruise ship have returned to the states. None are showing symptoms. The Andes strain is not believed to spread asymptomatically.

The incubation period, which is the time between exposure and the first symptoms, is six weeks, according to the WHO. The disease causes severe respiratory symptoms and is fatal for more than a third of people who contract it. Outbreaks of hantavirus are rare. One in Argentina in 2018 killed 11, while one in Yosemite National Park in 2012 killed three.

Arizona’s and Virginia’s state health departments said only one passenger had returned to each of those states, while Georgia and Texas reported two passengers each. California’s state health department, in a statement shared with POLITICO, said “residents” had returned there from the cruise — meaning at least eight cruise passengers are back in the U.S.

The health departments said they were monitoring the passengers.

Seventeen Americans are thought to still be on board, according to reports citing the cruise operator, the Dutch firm Ocean Expeditions.

Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health who also leads the CDC, said in a post on social media platform X late Wednesday that “the risk to the American public is very low.”

The WHO has also said it sees the risk of significant further spread as low.

Bhattacharya said the CDC “began coordinating with domestic and international partners as soon as we were notified of a hantavirus situation.”

He added that the CDC “provided clear, written health guidance” to the American passengers on the ship through the State Department.

“CDC has the world’s leading experts on hantavirus and is lending its technical expertise when coordinating with interagency partners, state health offices, and international authorities on response and repatriation planning,” Bhattacharya wrote.

Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s acting director of epidemic and pandemic management, said experts from the WHO and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control plus two Dutch infectious disease doctors are on the ship.

The United Kingdom notified the WHO of the outbreak on Saturday, Tedros said.

The first victim, a Dutch man who developed symptoms on board, died on the ship on April 11 but he was not tested for hantavirus.

His wife disembarked on St. Helena and flew to Johannesburg, where she died on April 25, according to Tedros. South African health authorities confirmed she died of hantavirus.

The couple had been on a bird watching trip through Argentina, Chile and Uruguay before boarding the cruise ship, Tedros said, adding that the WHO was working with the Argentinian authorities to track the couple’s movement.

Tedros said a third woman died on the ship on May 2. Her remains are still on board and the WHO is working with the ship operator to ensure their safe storage and transfer, Van Kerkhove told reporters.

Five other passengers with symptoms are hospitalized in the Netherlands, South Africa and Switzerland, Tedros said.

None of the passengers or crew members still on board show symptoms, he added.

Some countries are putting in place quarantine measures for returning passengers.

The WHO is still working on how to safely disembark passengers remaining on the ship once they reach the Canary Islands, WHO officials said.

Asked whether passengers not showing symptoms will be allowed to return home on commercial flights, Van Kerkhove said the WHO was working with the governments of the countries that have nationals on board to develop plans for their safe journey home.

Jeanne Marrazzo, the CEO of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said on a call with reporters Thursday morning that it was unusual the CDC had not yet published a Health Alert Network notice about the outbreak on its website, referring to the system the agency uses to raise awareness about public health threats.

She said she feared the Trump administration’s cuts to the agency would undermine its response.

Carlos del Rio, a professor at the Emory University School of Medicine and a former Infectious Diseases Society of America president, said on the same call that in the past he would have expected CDC personnel to be deployed to the ship to provide technical assistance and help investigate.

Marrazzo previously led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is part of the NIH, and has alleged that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired her in retaliation for a whistleblower claim she filed in September.