The Defender’s Government NewsWatch delivers the latest headlines related to news and new developments coming out of federal agencies, including HHS, CDC, FDA, USDA, FCC and others. The views expressed in the below excerpts from other news sources do not necessarily reflect the views of The Defender. Our goal is to provide readers with breaking news that affects human health and the environment.
A World Health Organization (WHO) official on Thursday said the threat level imposed by hantavirus, which has killed three people aboard a cruise ship, does not resemble the pandemic-level threat that COVID-19 had six years ago.
Infectious disease epidemiologist Maria DeJoseph Van Kerkhove said during a press conference that the three hantavirus deaths of a Dutch couple and a German citizen, along with the evacuation of three people suspected of carrying the virus, are not a cause for panic.
“This is not COVID, this is not influenza,” she said. “It spreads very, very differently. So, there are different precautions that people are taking.”
Van Kerkhove addressed a similar question about how COVID-19 began with very few cases before spreading to a global pandemic. She told the reporter that COVID-19 was a novel coronavirus, while hantaviruses “have been around for quite a while.”
“But I want to be unequivocal here: this is not SARS-CoV-2, this is not the start of a COVID pandemic,” Van Kerkhove said, later adding that hantavirus spreads differently and that some “don’t transmit between people at all.”
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