The Georgia Department of Public Health is continuing to monitor two residents exposed to hantavirus aboard a cruise ship last month. Officials could monitor the couple for up to 45 days, Emory University epidemiologist Jodie Guest said.
“They are close to the 18-day mark that they’ve been back in the United States, which is when we would likely see symptoms if we’re going to,” she said.
Early symptoms of infection include fever, chills, myalgia (muscle aches), headaches, and gastrointestinal symptoms and can become complicated by acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), respiratory failure and shock. The case fatality rate is 35%. Most cases occur west of the Mississippi River; the disease is not endemic in Georgia, according to DPH.
There are nearly 40 strains of hantavirus found all over the world, and different strains cause different illnesses, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rare Andes strain is the only one known to cross from human to human. More often, spread occurs from feces or urine from rodents, particularly rats and mice.
In the past 30 years that DPH has been collecting data, fewer than 900 cases were reported, Guest said.
“Normally, we consider the hantavirus a dead-end virus, meaning one person gets it from a rodent, and then that is the only person who will get it,” Guest said. “This will not become a global pandemic. The transmission does not work effectively that way.”
A heightened danger of infectious diseases comes amid cuts to public health investments affecting communications and disease monitoring that have left local departments fragile, said Jennifer Nuzzo, professor at Brown University and director of the Pandemic Center.
During a recent briefing on the annual “Ready or Not” report from Trust for America’s Health, Nuzzo said she doesn’t think the hantavirus outbreak will become a global threat, but it does have the potential to further derail public health in the country if preparation isn’t taken seriously.
“I want to make sure that health care workers are aware of the threat,” Nuzzo said. “That they have the personal protective equipment, that they the right index of suspicion — the clinical suspicion — that someone may have been exposed.”
The World Health Organization is conducting the surveillance tracking backward to see where the Georgia couple was before boarding the cruise, but it’s believed that they were on a bird-watching expedition and that they likely picked it up there in Argentina, Guest said.
“There is probably less than a day where you would be infectious enough to transmit it to another person if you have this Andes strain,” Guest said. “And that is only when you first spike your fever that we believe that you are infectious enough to give it to other person, and it needs to be someone that you’re living with in close quarters or a person who is medically caring for you. So the transmission human to human is not easy.”
The WHO is leading the international investigation, which is why American membership in such health groups is crucial to public health, Guest said. President Trump announced his intent to withdraw from the WHO in January 2025, and it became official in January 2026.
