WASHINGTON, June 24 (Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday it has ended its response to the hantavirus outbreak linked to a cruise ship, nearly two months after the virus killed three people.
All U.S. citizens potentially exposed to hantavirus aboard the MV Hondius in the Atlantic finished their 42-day monitoring period on Sunday, with no cases reported in the country.
“No sustained transmission of Hantavirus occurred in the United States, and the monitoring period has concluded with no individuals remaining under observation,” U.S. health secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said in a statement. The Wall Street Journal first reported the development on Wednesday.
The outbreak involved the Andes virus, a rare hantavirus strain that typically circulates in Argentina and Chile. The cruise ship set off from Argentina on April 1.
All 18 U.S.-resident passengers from the hantavirus-hit ship have returned to their home states after completing monitoring at the National Quarantine Unit, according to the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
The CDC has repeatedly said the risk to the U.S. public from Andes virus remains extremely low.
Hantavirus spreads primarily through rodents, infecting people via contact with rats or mice, or their urine, droppings, or saliva, often when the virus becomes airborne during the cleaning of infested areas.
The Andes virus is the only known hantavirus that can spread through close, prolonged human-to-human contact.
CDC scientists recently returned from Argentina, where they worked alongside public health officials there to investigate the outbreak’s origins, including trapping and testing rodents in areas connected to the cruise ship’s route, Dr. Brendan Jackson, acting director of CDC’s Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology, told reporters on a call.
Preliminary results from the rodent samples all came back negative, Jackson said, adding that the likely source of exposure remains under investigation.
(Reporting by Akanksha Khushi and Sriparna Roy in Bengaluru, Ahmed Aboulenein in Washington; Editing by Andrew Heavens, Jonathan Ananda and Deepa Babington)
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