What we know about a Minnesotan's possible hantavirus exposure
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State health officials say they’re monitoring a Minnesotan who may have been exposed to hantavirus. The person was briefly in contact with a cruise ship traveler who tested positive for the virus.
The Minnesota Department of Health says the individual is not currently showing symptoms and the risk to the public remains very low.
Hantavirus is normally passed on by rodents but the Andes strain linked to the cruise ship outbreak is the only known type that can spread person-to-person.
Dr. Ruth Lynfield, epidemiologist at the Minnesota Department of Health, shared more about the steps being taken and what to know about the virus.
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The following was edited for length and clarity. Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
What is known so far about how this person may have been exposed?
What I can tell you is that there is a very extensive investigation going on with the people who had been on the cruise ship. People are really following the movements they made. It's an international investigation involving the World Health Organization, CDC, as well as health entities in various countries.
So, as part of that investigation, we were notified that there was someone who may have been — may have been — briefly exposed to someone who had been on board that ship and the person did end up getting infected.
And, just in really the abundance of caution, the CDC has asked us to monitor people who may have been in contact with cases so that's what we're doing.
How does the monitoring of a person take place? Are they quarantining at home or do they go somewhere else?
In this case, it really is an abundance of caution. Again, it's not like someone who was on board the ship. So, part of the conversation is determining where the person was, where they may have been in contact, and then we assess the recommendations that we would have.
We have discussed this with the CDC, and we are following the recommendations, which are we don't want the person to go out in public, that they really need to keep in very close touch with us — which they are, there they're being extremely cooperative. And if they need to have a conversation with someone, a brief interaction indoors, then they would be wearing a mask — all that sort of thing.
Then certainly, a really important component for this person is they have a lot of questions so we are available to them to answer their questions.
We do check in and make sure that they are not getting any signs of illness. If they were to develop any signs of illness, we have a plan with them on the next steps on how to evaluate them.
Does MDH do any contact tracing or is it the World Health Organization? Are you looking into potential other exposures?
This person is a contact. So someone did contact tracing to identify this person and to let us know the person may have had exposure.
It's not a definite exposure. It was something very brief. So again, in the abundance of caution, we are keeping an eye on them and we have advised them about not going out in public.
But, there’s no point in doing contacts of contacts because it truly is a low-risk situation for this particular person.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, do you think that this would have been the story that it is right now?
I think particularly because this involves a cruise ship that brings up images for a lot of people — there were cruise ships at the very beginning of COVID-19 and lots of discussion about the people who were on the cruise ship and potential spread.
And this is a virus that the general public has not heard a lot about so I think people are very curious, too.
What do you say to people who are feeling really worried about this?
This is definitely different than COVID-19. We have to remember that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic was a brand new virus. So, we did not know a whole lot about it and we were learning on the job.
That’s really frustrating for people. People really want to know what the risks are, exactly how does transmission occur, what they should expect — and we did not know a lot about SARS-CoV-2.
Now, having said that, we are always learning new things every time we have an outbreak, and I am sure we're going to learn something new about hantavirus.
However, there have been a couple of clusters of this Andes virus before the CDC has been involved. It is related to a rodent in South America, specifically in Argentina and Chile, and they have investigated patients. That's how we know it can be transmitted person-to-person.
In the outbreaks that we have seen, though, it has not had the kind of transmissibility that SARS-CoV-2 has had and and the reason I can say that is because people were able to control the outbreaks by isolating infectious people and by doing the contact tracing — and that's what's being done here.
So yes, I'm sure we will learn more, but this really is a different kind of situation than we were dealing with in 2020.
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