Hazmat team caught on camera rushing infected boat passengers into hospital care | US | News
Two passengers on the cruise ship who contracted hantavirus were hospitalized after being medically evacuated from the MV Hondius on Monday.
Dramatic footage captured the moment hospital staff encountered patients exposed to the virus while covered from head to toe in hazmat gear and PPE. The footage shows US healthcare workers taking them from the ambulance and taking them to intensive care at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, and one patient being carried in a wheelchair.
The duo had just completed a five-week voyage aboard the MV Hondius, a ship that was at the center of a deadly rat-borne virus outbreak that triggered an international incident after three passengers died.
The Georgia hospital has since confirmed that both men came directly from the MV Hondius following the deadly outbreak at sea. One patient is symptomatic and is being treated in Emory’s biocontainment unit, and the other is asymptomatic and is currently under evaluation and monitoring.
The two passengers had gotten off the virus-infected cruise ship in the Canary Islands before being transferred to the Serious Infectious Diseases Unit at Emory University in Atlanta. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notified the Georgia Department of Public Health on Monday, May 11. Mirror.
A spokesperson for the Department of Public Health (DPH) said: “Federal healthcare professionals are taking every precaution necessary in each of these cases and there is currently no risk to the public.” Early symptoms of hantavirus infection include fever, chills, myalgia (muscle aches), headaches, and gastrointestinal symptoms that can progress to acute respiratory distress syndrome, respiratory failure, and shock. DPH officials confirmed that the case fatality rate in the United States is around 35 percent.
There are approximately 40 types of hantaviruses worldwide, and each causes different diseases; but the rare Andean strain remains the only strain known to spread among humans. Transmission mostly occurs through contact with rat feces, saliva and urine. However, officials emphasized that there was no need to be alarmed by the symptomatic patient on US soil.
Emory University epidemiologist Dr. Jodie Guest explained that fewer than 900 cases of hantavirus have ever been recorded in U.S. history, with medical experts calling the disease a “dead-end virus.”
“Normally we consider hantavirus to be a fatal virus, so if a person catches it from a rodent, then that is the only person who will catch it,” Dr Guest said.
“This is not going to become a global pandemic. This way of transmission doesn’t work effectively.”
Other health experts also sought to ease Americans’ concerns about a possible second outbreak. They echoed Guest’s assurances. Dr Nicole Iovine, chief epidemiologist and infectious diseases specialist at the University of Florida Health Shands Hospital, explained that the way hantavirus spreads between individuals is significantly different from flu or coronavirus. “These viruses mainly affect the upper respiratory tract, so they can be easily transmitted through talking and coughing,” Dr Iovine said. “Hantavirus and Andes virus tend to infect very deep into the lungs, so they are not as easily transmitted through the air.”
According to the World Health Organization, there is currently no vaccine against hantavirus infection.
