234
0MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Public health authorities around the world are working to contain a hantavirus outbreak that started on a cruise ship. And the ship is currently off the coast of Africa, but dozens of passengers previously disembarked and then flew all over, including Turkey, New Zealand and the United States. NPR global health correspondent Gabrielle Emanuel is here to bring us up to speed. Hey there.
GABRIELLE EMANUEL, BYLINE: Hi.
KELLY: Hi. So bring us up to speed. How many cases do we have now?
EMANUEL: So eight cases have been reported. That includes three deaths. It is believed that the original man to get sick came into contact with the virus before boarding the cruise. He may have gotten it when bird-watching at a landfill in Argentina. So infection typically happens when breathing in virus particles from an infected rodent's urine, feces or saliva. The issue here is a the specific type of hantavirus that he picked up, the Andes virus, can transmit human to human. But it spreads between people in close and sustained contact. So think a household or a health worker treating a patient, something like that.
KELLY: Gabrielle, what are the symptoms, and what is the treatment?
EMANUEL: Yeah. It starts with flu-like symptoms and can progress to a severe and deadly respiratory infection. There is no vaccine or specific treatment, but if you get to a hospital quickly, they can provide things like a ventilator, and that can help. The one thing that's worth noting here is that the death rate is said to be 30- to 40%. But Jeanne Marrazzo, with the Infectious Disease Society of America, says it's likely lower than that.
JEANNE MARRAZZO: While that's a very scary number, we often don't know what the denominator of people infected is 'cause mild cases might be missed.
EMANUEL: It's really only the sick people who show up at the doctor and then get tested, and that's not a lot of people. So the death rate might seem higher than it actually is.
KELLY: Got it. I'm just going to ask the question that I imagine is popping into a lot of people's minds, which is, could this be the next pandemic?
EMANUEL: It is very unlikely. Here is Maria van Kerkhove of the World Health Organization speaking today at a press conference.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
MARIA VAN KERKHOVE: I want to be unequivocal here. This is not the start of a COVID pandemic. This is an outbreak that we see on a ship.
EMANUEL: She emphasized that the threat to the general public is very low.
KELLY: And why? What makes the hantavirus so different from COVID?
EMANUEL: There are many things. First of all, we have known about this virus for decades, unlike COVID, which was new. It does not spread that easily. You need close contact. Also, COVID and flu mutate very fast. They are often seeing these new strains as the virus reshapes itself. Those changes can make it harder to contain. But from what we know, the hantavirus makes these changes much more slowly. So the thing to remember here is that there are viruses all around us all the time, and the vast majority of the time, they do not spiral into pandemics.
KELLY: That is somewhat reassuring. Meanwhile, back to this current outbreak, what's going on with all the other passengers?
EMANUEL: So some of the passengers are still on the boat, more than a hundred people. They are not showing any symptoms. They are isolating in their cabins as plans are made to get them off the boat and medically assessed. That's according to the World Health Organization. And then for all the passengers who previously disembarked, countries are working to track them down so they can be informed and monitored and even quarantined. It's country by country. The virus can stay in the body for one to six weeks before making someone sick, so they'll be monitoring for a little while.
KELLY: That's NPR's Gabrielle Emanuel. Thank you.
EMANUEL: Thank you.
📻 更多听力及文本见公众号【琐简英语】，回复"1"可进【打卡交流群】
