New Jersey says two residents were 'potentially exposed' to hantavirus on an airplane
State officials said the risk to the general public was low. New Jersey has never had a confirmed hantavirus case, they said.
Two New Jersey residents may have been exposed to a person infected with hantavirus, state health officials said Friday. They were flying internationally when exposed to an infected person who had gotten off the MV Hondius, the Dutch cruise ship at the center of an outbreak of the rare respiratory virus.
Neither of the New Jersey residents has hantavirus symptoms, the state Department of Health said in a news release.
The department declined to release other details about the travelers to protect their privacy.
State officials said the risk to the general public was low. New Jersey has never had a confirmed hantavirus case, they said.
Health officials have confirmed at least five hantavirus cases connected to the cruise ship outbreak, and three people have died. Three people in the Netherlands were recently tested for hantavirus after coming into contact with an infected person on a plane and developing symptoms; two tests came back negative and the third was still being analyzed, the New York Times reported.
State health officials did not specify whether the New Jersey residents were on the same plane, saying only that they were not traveling on the cruise ship.
Health officials from a number of countries have also been working to track more than two dozen people who left the MV Hondius before the outbreak was identified.
Hantavirus typically spreads through droppings from infected rodents like mice and rats, not from person to person. A strain present in the U.S. West spreads this way, said Thersa Sweet, a teaching professor of epidemiology at Drexel University.
Andes virus, the strain detected aboard the MV Hondius, is the only known hantavirus that can spread from person to person through prolonged contact with an infected person. It originates in South America and is usually spread by rodents.
Still, Sweet said, hantavirus is far less contagious than other respiratory illnesses like flu, COVID-19, and measles.
“You really do need close contact. One of the people infected on the cruise ship was a physician. Another was a spouse [of an infected person],” she said. “The risk to the general public is pretty slim at this point.”
Even in a confined environment like an airplane, a person would have a higher risk of catching COVID than hantavirus on the same flight as an infected person, she said.
Hantavirus can incubate from four to 42 days, but people without symptoms are not considered contagious, state health officials said.
Early symptoms of the Andes virus strain include a headache, fever, muscle aches and back pain, nausea, diarrhea, cough, chest pain, loss of appetite, and difficulty breathing, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There are no vaccines to protect against hantavirus, and no licensed antiviral treatments that specifically target the virus, according to the World Health Organization.
Medical care can help manage respiratory, cardiac, and kidney complications, and it’s crucial for patients with serious symptoms to be admitted to intensive care early.
