New Jersey health officials said Friday they are monitoring two residents who may have been infected with hantavirus after being on a plane with someone who was a passenger on the Dutch cruise ship now experiencing a deadly outbreak.
The state Department of Health said the risk to the general public remains low and neither of the New Jersey residents has reported any symptoms. The two were not passengers on the ship.
No hantavirus cases have been confirmed in New Jersey, and there is no history of cases in the Garden State, health officials said.
The state health department said public health agencies in several other states are conducting similar monitoring. It said it would continue to coordinate with local public health offices — the entities frequently responsible for tracking disease outbreaks — and federal partners.
Hantaviruses are commonly carried by rodents but can be deadly to humans if infected, following exposure to the animals or their droppings or urine, according to the World Health Organization. A South American strain called the Andes form, the only version known to pass from human to human, was discovered among passengers on a Dutch cruise ship earlier this week.
The WHO said symptoms can appear one to six weeks after hantavirus infection and they are similar to those from other viruses: fever, nausea, vomiting, and head and muscle aches. While there is no specific treatment for the infection, supportive medical care, like fluids, fever reducers, and pain relief, can improve outcomes and save lives, it said.
While hantavirus is rare in humans, fatality rates range between less than 1% to 15% in Asia and Europe and up to 50% in the Americas, the WHO said. Worldwide, as many as 100,000 cases are reported annually, it said.
Human to human transmission of the Andes version is rare and it requires extended close contact, said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the acting director of the WHO’s Department of Epidemic and Pandemic Management, in a video posted online. Kerkhove’s team has been advising those involved with the cruise ship response.
“This is not COVID, this is not influenza. It spreads very, very differently,” she said.
Three people have died and others have fallen ill on the cruise ship, the MV Hondius, according to the AP, and at least five cases of the Andes virus have been confirmed, including among two people who were evacuated on Wednesday.
The 150 remaining passengers were removed from the ship once it reached the Canary Islands, placed in isolation and transported by air to Amsterdam, where they will be monitored at area hospitals, the Associated Press reported Friday.
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