US President Donald Trump announced that American experts are conducting a study of the Hanta virus, noting that this virus is by its nature "more complex than COVID-19," but he stressed that things are under control
Trump told reporters outside the White House: "Everything is very well under control. They know this virus very well. It's been around for a long time, not as simple as Covid, but let's see. We're studying it very closely. We have great experts dealing with it."
The US president also pointed out that the Hanta virus is well known to scientists, and unlike COVID-19, it is not easily transmitted from person to person, which is consistent with available medical information.
Hantaviruses are a genus of viruses transmitted to humans through contact with infected rodents (such as mice and rats) or by inhaling dust contaminated with their urine or feces. They can cause two main forms of illness:
Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS): Affects the lungs and causes severe difficulty breathing, with a mortality rate that can reach 50%.
Hemorrhagic fever with nephrotic syndrome (HFRS): Affects the kidneys and can lead to kidney failure.
Unlike the coronavirus (COVID-19), which spreads rapidly through respiratory droplets, human-to-human transmission of hantavirus is very rare, with most strains known to have only limited transmission from rodents to humans. The only strain with documented cases of limited human-to-human transmission is the Andes virus, which is causing the current outbreak.
The World Health Organization had previously reported seven confirmed cases of Hantavirus on board the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondus, which was traveling from Argentina to Cape Verde, where three people died and another person is in intensive care in South Africa.
The virus causing the outbreak has been identified as the Andes virus, one of the rare strains capable of human-to-human transmission, but the World Health Organization has confirmed that the risk to public health remains low, stressing that there is no need to panic or impose travel restrictions.
The ship is currently heading to the Canary Islands (Spain) to complete its journey, with health authorities monitoring the passengers and crew.
The Trump administration's interest in the Hanta virus comes at a time when the development of a vaccine against it is still underway, as there is currently no approved vaccine available to prevent infection.
In the same context, the director of the Russian Gamaleya Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology, Alexander Gintsburg, announced that developing a vaccine against the Hanta virus may take about a year and a half, stressing that they have the necessary knowledge for that.
