🛳️ 🦠 The World Health Organization insisted on Friday that there is a minimal risk from the han...
🛳️ 🦠 The World Health Organization insisted on Friday that there is a minimal risk from the hantavirus to the general public, as countries prepared to repatriate passengers stuck on a cruise ship hit by a deadly outbreak ➡️
DI
AB
+1
7 sources·May 8, 1:47 PM(56 days ago)·14m read
The Hill
Audio version
Tap play to generate a narrated version.
[The Hill] Is there a treatment for hantavirus? (NEXSTAR) – Health officials in numerous countries are working to contain the spread of illnesses linked to a hantavirus outbreak traced back to a now-deceased passenger on the MV Hondius cruise ship last month.
Post via X — linked by one of this story's sources.
The cruise, which departed from Argentina, was carrying 147 passengers and crew members, from countries in the Americas, Europe and Asia. The World Health Organization on Friday had reported eight confirmed cases of hantavirus among those on the ship.
Three passengers have also died. Dozens of other passengers had also left the ship before the severity of the situation became apparent and the MV Hondius was isolated. Some of those passengers had also returned home, including residents of Arizona, California, Georgia, Texas and Virginia, NewsNation reported.
“We certainly have been tracking this very closely,” Dr. Cameron Webb, the commissioner of the Virginia Department of Health, told CNN of a male MV Hondius passenger who returned home to Virginia this week. ” Hantaviruses are among a group of viruses that generally affect rodents, but can be transmitted to humans through contact with their droppings, urine or saliva, or inhaling droplets from contaminated air, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
But the hantavirus suspected in the MV Hondius outbreak is known as the Andes virus, which is among a family of hantaviruses with documented human-to-human transmission. The Andes virus is the cause of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, also called hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome.
The first symptoms — usually one to eight weeks after contact – often include fatigue, fever and muscle aches, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “Early in the illness, you really may not be able to tell the difference between hantavirus and having the flu,” said Dr.
Sonja Bartolome of UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Half of patients also report headaches, dizziness, chills and abdominal issues. Late symptoms that show up roughly 4 to 10 days after the first phase can include tightness in the chest, lungs filled with fluid, coughing and shortness of breath.
“HPS can be deadly. Thirty-eight percent of people who develop respiratory symptoms may die from the disease,” the CDC writes. As for treatment, there is currently no cure or approved antiviral treatment, officials say. Patients are provided with supportive care to manage symptoms and can be placed under monitoring for possible “respiratory, cardiac and kidney complications,” WHO says.
Outcomes are said to be better for patients who pay close attention to symptoms and contact a healthcare provider early. “If a person arrives to care early, as soon as they have those mild symptoms ... they have a chance to have those symptoms treated,” along with “anything else their body is fighting,” Nyka Alexander, the emergencies communications lead at WHO, said in a discussion livestreamed to social media on Friday.
“ Alexander added that WHO had "not seen any research" that ivermectin has been effective in treating hantaviruses. Both the WHO and CDC also acknowledge that diagnosing hantaviruses can be tricky, as the initial symptoms are similar to less severe illnesses.
For this reason, WHO advises patients and doctors to consider “possible rodent exposure, occupational and environmental risks, travel history, and contact with known cases in areas where hantaviruses are present” when reviewing cases. Lab tests can also confirm hantaviruses.
As for the remaining passengers or crew on the ship, all were asymptomatic as of Thursday, Netherlands-based Oceanwide Expeditions, the cruise operator of the MV Hondius, said The World Health Organization had added that the risk to the wider public is low.
“We believe this will be a limited outbreak if the public health measures are implemented and solidarity is shown across all countries,” said Dr. Abdirahman Mahamud, the WHO’s alert and response director on Thursday. Nexstar's Jeremy Tanner and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
---
[washingtontimes.com] ‘Not the next COVID’: WHO official moves to calm fears over deadly cruise ship outbreak A top World Health Organization official is pushing back against pandemic fears, saying a deadly hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship -- the first ever recorded...
---
[@disclosetv] NOW - WHO confirms that Ivermectin is not an effective treatment for Hantavirus and reiterates th... NOW - WHO confirms that Ivermectin is not an effective treatment for Hantavirus and reiterates that "the risk is low for the general population."
---
[@statnews] The latest in the hantavirus cruise ship saga, why these former officials left the FDA, and more ... The latest in the hantavirus cruise ship saga, why these former officials left the FDA, and more health news from Morning Rounds
---
[@ABC] The public health expert who led the White House's response to the coronavirus pandemic under the... The public health expert who led the White House's response to the coronavirus pandemic under the Biden administration says the hantavirus outbreak currently unfolding on a cruise ship will not become the next global pandemic.
---
[@NBCNews] NEW: A flight attendant who was not onboard the cruise ship at the center of a deadly hantavirus ... NEW: A flight attendant who was not onboard the cruise ship at the center of a deadly hantavirus outbreak has tested negative for the virus, the World Health Organization says.
---
[@AFP] 🛳️ 🦠 The World Health Organization insisted on Friday that there is a minimal risk from the han... 🛳️ 🦠 The World Health Organization insisted on Friday that there is a minimal risk from the hantavirus to the general public, as countries prepared to repatriate passengers stuck on a cruise ship hit by a deadly outbreak ➡️
--- FULL TEXT (washingtontimes.com) ---
‘Not the next COVID’: WHO official moves to calm fears over deadly cruise ship outbreak Skip to content Close News Corrections Politics National World Security The Advocates Seen, Heard & Whispered Business & Economy D.C. Local Media Spotlight Newsmakers Waste, Fraud & Abuse Inside the Ring Higher Ground Culture Entertainment Technology Obituaries Just the Headlines Dive Deeper Celebrating The Washington Times Policy Corrections Threat Status Energy & Environment Banking & Finance Health Care Reform Second Amendment Immigration Reform Homeland & Cybersecurity Aerospace & Defense Taxes & Budget Law Enforcement & Intelligence Transportation & Infrastructure Commentary Commentary Main Corrections Editorials Letters Cheryl K.
Chumley Kelly Sadler Jed Babbin Tom Basile Tim Constantine Joseph Curl Joseph R. DeTrani Don Feder Billy Hallowell Daniel N. Hoffman David Keene Robert Knight Gene Marks Clifford D. May Michael McKenna Stephen Moore Tim Murtaugh Peter Navarro Everett Piper Cal Thomas Scott Walker Miles Yu Black Voices Books Cartoons To the Republic Sports Sports Main Corrections Washington Commanders Football Baseball Basketball NCAA Thom Loverro Tennis Golf Hockey Soccer Horse Racing NASCAR & Racing District of Sports Podcast Sports Photos Sponsored Corrections American energy unleashed Infrastructure 2026 Building the health care Americans deserve Revitalizing Rural America Unbridled Clean Energy Faith at Work Building a healthier America Transportation 2025 Investing in American Health Free Iran 2025 Invest in Greece 2025 Events Corrections Subscriber Only Events Reagan Forum IDEX 2025 Reinventing after Globalization Harm Reduction and Public Health Golden Dome for America Videos Things to do in D.C. Video/Podcasts Corrections All Videos All Podcasts The Front Page Threat Status Politically Unstable The Sitdown with Alex Swoyer Bold & Blunt The Higher Ground Court Watch Victory Over Communism District of Sports Capitol Hill Show The Unregulated Podcast ForAmerica Washington Times Weekly God, Country & American Story Games Games Main Corrections Play Sudoku Crossword Puzzle Word Search Chess & Checkers Solitaire Real-Time Crossword Puzzles Daily Mini Crossword Puzzle Quizzes Subscribe Sign In Listen Now Threat Status podcast: The real impact of AI on the U.S. military in 2026 Get today’s top stories in under five minutes Listen to the Front Page Podcast WATCH: How a Supreme Court bombshell is redrawing the congressional map before November WATCH: Blue states’ waste, fraud and abuse O.J. Oleka joins Kelly Sadler TRENDING: Donald Trump Iran Marco Rubio China Trump Administration Holy See White House Ukraine Supreme Court Los Angeles Advertisement ‘Not the next COVID’: WHO official moves to calm fears over deadly cruise ship outbreak Back Print Add us as a preferred source on Google Video The Washington Times AI News Desk - Friday, May 8, 2026 A top World Health Organization official is pushing back against pandemic fears as a hantavirus-stricken cruise ship heads to the Canary Islands — and a suspected case emerges on one of the world’s most remote islands.
But it is a serious infectious disease,” WHO epidemic expert Maria Van Kerkhove said Wednesday. The MV Hondius is expected to arrive in Tenerife this weekend, where Spanish health officials are preparing to carefully evacuate more than 140 passengers and crew.
None of those remaining aboard is currently showing symptoms. are arranging repatriation flights for their citizens. A suspected hantavirus case has also appeared on Tristan da Cunha, a remote British overseas territory. British officials confirmed the patient was a passenger on the ship.
” Investigators believe the outbreak may have begun during a birdwatching excursion in Ushuaia, at Argentina’s southern tip, where hantavirus cases have surged — a trend many researchers link to climate change. ” This article was constructed with the assistance of artificial intelligence and published by a member of The Washington Times' AI News Desk team.
Newsletter Morning Rounds The aging scientific workforce collides with rising fabricating citations in medical journals The latest in the hantavirus cruise ship saga, why these former officials left the FDA, and more health news from Morning Rounds Manage alerts for this article Email this article Share this article Adobe By O.
Rose Broderick May 8, 2026 Disability in Health Care Reporting Fellow O. Rose Broderick [email protected] O. Rose Broderick reports on the health policies and technologies that govern people with disabilities’ lives. Before coming to STAT, she worked at WNYC’s Radiolab and Scientific American, and her story debunking a bogus theory about transgender kids was nominated for a 2024 GLAAD Media Award.
11. Get your daily dose of health and medicine every weekday with STAT’s free newsletter Morning Rounds. Sign up here . The AC broke in STAT’s NYC bureau, so I guess summer has arrived. Happy Friday. Advertisement The latest update in the hantavirus cruise ship saga Buckle up, it’s going to be weeks or even months before the hantavirus outbreak on the cruise ship will be resolved.
Here’s the latest update , from STAT’s Helen Branswell. A few nuggets from the World Health Organization’s latest briefing: The MV Hondius is moving to the Canary Islands, WHO officials are working to get people off the ship, and the United States (which famously completed its withdrawal from the international health organization earlier this year) is being cooperative.
But for the latest news on the outbreak’s origin, read Helen’s story . Meanwhile, across the Atlantic Ocean, the top U.S. official responsible for public health on cruise ships is stepping down , according to an internal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announcement obtained by STAT’s Daniel Payne.
Advertisement Luis Rodríguez had been part of the Vessel Sanitation Program since 2010 and served as its chief since 2023. The sudden retirement comes after a turbulent year for the division in which the program’s full-time employees were laid off. The administration did not respond to questions about Rodríguez’s replacement.
Read more from Daniel. The (sorry) state of science STAT’s Anil Oza published two stories yesterday about the state of science, both of them troubling. First, researchers have found a potential culprit for the long decline in discoveries that can push a field dramatically forward: an aging workforce .
Most researchers begin their careers conducting their more disruptive work, but as they age they tend to ditch the path-forging work in favor of more familiar work. A new analysis published Thursday in Science reviewed the work of 12.5 million scientists who published at least three papers between 1960 and 2020, and tracked the ways those papers cited previous work and were then cited going forward.
As scientists age, they cited older and older work. But a slower pace of discovery is not the only scientific headwind. The rise in AI may be behind a simultaneous boom in fabricated citations found in medical journals, according to a study published Thursday.
The new analysis found 4,000 fabricated citations among 2,800 papers — a low number but a figure that is rising rapidly. For the first 7 weeks of 2026, the figure reached one in 277 papers. Read more from Anil. ‘The FDA left me’ If you haven’t read Lizzy Lawrence’s phenomenal piece about what the FDA has lost during the second Trump administration, Alex Hogan devoted his weekly video to the saga.
Alex and Lizzy drove around DC and sat down with six former FDA officials to discuss their love for the agency — and why months of turmoil ultimately spurred their exits. Kids in poorer countries are six times more likely to die during emergency surgery The global stratification of health is real: Kids in poorer countries with severe abdominal injuries were six times more likely to die after receiving emergency surgery than their counterparts in richer countries.
Advertisement The findings, published Thursday in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, tracked outcomes from 237 pediatric patients who underwent a trauma laparotomy, recruited from 85 hospitals across 32 countries. The majority of patients were male (82.3%) and had sustained a blunt injury (57.0%) like being hit by a car or other forms of violence.
Thirty days after the operation, kids’ mortality globally was 8%, but the risk was more acute for patients in lower resource settings. Traffic accidents are a big cause of death and disability worldwide, so while the study’s sample size was small and quite diverse in origin, it is still worrisome.
We need more men in nursing The demand for qualified nurses is rising, with nearly 200,000 annual job openings expected due to the mass exodus of nurses reaching retirement age. Who should fill this gap? Men, writes Nicholas A. Giordano, a nurse and assistant professor at Emory University’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing in Atlanta.
Men currently account for 12% of nurses nationally, even though the profession can often bring stability and median salaries for registered nurses routinely approach six figures. But the proportion of men in the industry has remained stagnant for years.
To close the gender gap, Giordano writes, health leaders must expand outreach to men and continue recruiting and positioning more male faculty to teach male students early on in their training. Read more . What we’re reading Trump’s immigration crackdown has harmed scores of kids with tear gas, pepper spray, ProPublica Republicans’ midterm health care dilemma, Axios Employees with medical conditions challenge C.D.C. in-office requirement, New York Times Becerra’s rise baffles his former Biden colleagues, Politico health care Submit a correction request Reprints O.
Rose Broderick Disability in Health Care Reporting Fellow O. Rose Broderick reports on the health policies and technologies that govern people with disabilities’ lives. Before coming to STAT, she worked at WNYC’s Radiolab and Scientific American, and her story debunking a bogus theory about transgender kids was nominated for a 2024 GLAAD Media Award.
11.
--- FULL TEXT (@ABC) ---
Wellness Former White House COVID-19 response coordinator answers hantavirus questions 3:01 Hantavirus questions answered live on ‘GMA’ ABC News By Katie Kindelan May 08, 2026, 4:39 PM The public health expert who led the White House's response to the coronavirus pandemic under the Biden administration says the hantavirus outbreak currently unfolding on a cruise ship will not become the next global pandemic.
"I'm concerned about the people on the boat. I'm not concerned about everybody else," Dr. " "This is not going to turn out to be some pandemic," Jha continued. "This is not a virus that spreads that easily. " Hantavirus, a virus that can cause serious illness and death, has emerged in the headlines due to an outbreak aboard the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius, which departed from Argentina in early April.
Dr. Ashish Jha, former White House COVID-19 response coordinator, speaks about the hantavirus on "Good Morning America" on May 8, 2026. ABC News To date, three people who were aboard the ship are known to have died of the virus, and the total number of confirmed cases associated with the outbreak is increasing, according to health officials.
Hantavirus previously made headlines last year after being identified as the cause of death of actor Gene Hackman's wife Betsy Arakawa, after the couple was found dead at their New Mexico home in February 2025 . Jha, now a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, answered "GMA" viewers' questions Friday about the virus and what people should know.
Will hantavirus become the next COVID-19 pandemic? No. According to Jha, hantavirus does not have the potential to become the next COVID-19 pandemic, which sent countries around the world into lockdown in 2020 and led to more than 1 million deaths in the United States alone.
"COVID spread very, very easily, and it spread even when you didn't have symptoms," Jha said. "None of that is true for hantavirus.
The HillIs there a treatment for hantavirus?washingtontimes.com‘Not the next COVID’: WHO official moves to calm fears over deadly cruise ship outbreakDI@disclosetvNOW - WHO confirms that Ivermectin is not an effective treatment for Hantavirus and reiterates th...+4
The HillIs there a treatment for hantavirus?washingtontimes.com‘Not the next COVID’: WHO official moves to calm fears over deadly cruise ship outbreakDI@disclosetvNOW - WHO confirms that Ivermectin is not an effective treatment for Hantavirus and reiterates th...+4
These outlets didn't split into competing frames — coverage was uniform.
Joseph Aoun appealed for continued American support following a US-backed agreement with Israel that seeks to end hostilities. Hezbollah has rejected the deal, which requires its disarmament.
A federal appeals court ruled that the administration can reinstall interpretive panels at the site of George Washington's former Philadelphia home. The panels replace earlier displays removed after a 2025 executive order.
A doctor who tested positive for Ebola after returning from the Democratic Republic of Congo has recovered and left a French hospital. The case marked the first time French authorities detected the virus on national territory.
The Hill
