How worried should Mississauga and Brampton residents be about Hantavirus? 

While infectious diseases are vast and varied (and far from new), news about new outbreaks–measles, mpox (formerly monkeypox) and hantavirus–is almost impossible not to see through the lens of COVID-19, a virus that killed millions across the globe and became synonymous with months-long lockdowns that still, years later, reverberate through every town and city they touched. 

While hantavirus is not new, it has been dominating headlines since a ‘perfect storm’ of circumstances led to a deadly outbreak on the MV Hondius cruise ship, a polar expedition vessel that departed from Argentina on April 1. 

The ship, which contained 130 passengers, was evacuated on the Spanish island of Tenerife on May 11. As of now, 11 cases of hantavirus have been confirmed, and three deaths have been reported. 

While Hantaviruses originate in rodents, including mice and rats, passengers on the ship got the Andes virus, which is found in Argentina and Chile. It is the only type out of dozens of hantaviruses known to be capable of transmission between humans. 

Passengers from the impacted ship are in quarantine worldwide, and earlier this week, Ontario’s health minister said a third person is now in isolation in the province as a precaution and is self-isolating in Peel. 

It’s not yet known if the person is in Mississauga or Brampton, only that they are self-isolating and asymptomatic, Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones said following a press conference on a different matter in Toronto.

The health minister added the person is being monitored by Peel Public Health officials, who told INsauga.com on Monday the person is visiting Canada and is not a resident of Mississauga or Brampton.

Previously, Ontario health officials said two people living in the same household in the area of Grey and Bruce counties, in cottage country near Owen Sound, are similarly isolating from the public as a precaution.

In total, 10 people with connections to the ship’s outbreak are currently located in Canada, including six passengers and four people who weren’t onboard but may have been exposed to hantavirus on flights.

Four ship passengers are isolating on Vancouver Island – a couple in their 70s from the Yukon, a person in their 70s from the island, and a person from B.C. in their 50s who now lives abroad.

With close contacts isolating, the question at the forefront of most people’s minds is simple: How worried should I be?

“The answer is not scared at all,” Dr. Sumon Chakrabarti, an infectious disease specialist at Trillium Health Partners in Mississauga, tells INsauga.com.

Chakrabarti says that while it’s understandable for many to see this outbreak as a potential precursor to a COVID-like pandemic, the viruses behave differently, significantly reducing the risk of a global outbreak that would put a large number of people at risk. 

“This is a very different virus and the risk to the public is low. With COVID, it was a pandemic respiratory virus and basically a freight train,” he says, adding that many of the non-pharmaceutical interventions implemented to slow the spread, such as mask mandates and contract tracing, were not able to quell a virus that was significantly more contagious. 

“It was a pandemic virus and it’s much too fast and contagious to contain. Hantavirus is not like that. The Andres version can spread person-to-person, but that spread most likely requires close, prolonged contact. It doesn’t have the ability to jump and explode like COVID did.” 

While precautions are a rational response to any spate of viral illnesses, Chakrabarti suggests COVID psychology might still be at play in discussions surrounding the most recent outbreak. 

“Everything we look at, we’re framing through that COVID lens. When you look at what’s happened with a lot of outbreaks, it’s a perfect storm,” he says, adding that evidence suggests that a person (or persons) was infected off the ship, got sick on board, and infected other passengers who were in close proximity to him over a prolonged period of time. 

“A ship is cramped and has recirculated air. I do expect we’ll have more cases surfacing in the coming weeks and we will be cautious if we find anyone, but once people are off the ship, even on a plane, it’s a different environment and it’s not likely to cause an explosive number of cases,” he says. 

“If you look right now, people with cases are all from the ship. That’s important. Once you take away the environment of the ship, the potential for spread drops quite a bit.” 

As of May 13, all confirmed cases of the virus have been identified among people who were on board the MV Hondius. Since the outbreak was reported, individuals who fell ill after interacting with cruise passengers on planes have been tested for hantavirus. So far, those contacts have all tested negative. 

“It presents exactly like any other virus, so people with symptoms are called a suspected case and if it’s negative, they likely had something else, like a garden variety virus such as the flu,” Chakrabarti says.

The virus, Chakrabarti says, can lead to severe illness or death if contracted. Because it has a much higher fatality rate than a more common respiratory pathogen, such as COVID or influenza, it tends to spread less prolifically. 

“When you have something that severe, it usually doesn’t go from person to person because you’re not well enough to spread it before you’re very sick,” Chakrabarti says. 

According to Health Canada, most people who become infected with hantavirus contract the disease when they inhale virus particles released into the air from rodent urine, droppings, or saliva, or when they touch objects or eat food contaminated with the bodily waste or fluids of infected rodents. Infections are also linked to rodent bites, but this is considered rare. 

With the exception of the Andes variant, which was first identified in the 1990s, the virus does not spread through person-to-person contact.

Health Canada indicates that the virus can manifest as a pulmonary syndrome (a severe and potentially fatal respiratory disease) or a hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (a high fever, kidney damage and hemorrhage). Symptoms of the former can include tiredness, dizziness, fever and chills, muscle aches, nausea, coughing, and difficulty breathing. Symptoms of the latter can include intense headaches, back and stomach pain, fever, nausea, blurred vision, flushed skin, inflamed or red eyes, a rash or low blood pressure. 

While no one in Canada is currently showing symptoms, those who develop any signs of illness can be tested. Canada has two types of hantavirus tests: one that detects antibodies in the blood and a PCR test that detects viral particles. 

Because of the virus’s long incubation period (one to eight weeks), experts aren’t confident that a test would be effective for someone without symptoms.

Ultimately, Chakrabarti says that precautionary protocols are being observed and that while the outcome for some cruise passengers has been heartbreaking, the likelihood of cases emerging at a breakneck pace in Ontario (or elsewhere) is low.  

“The loss of human life is tragic, but it’s not going to pandemic,” he says. 

As for personal precautions, he says there’s no need for anyone to alter their daily routine, simply because the risk of contracting the virus from another person is so low. That said, he advises taking common-sense precautions if you suspect you’ll be in contact with rodent droppings.  

“The risk of [the Andes version] is so low that there’s not much you need to do. If you clean out a cottage or places with rat droppings, do that with good ventilation or a mask, but even if there are droppings, the risk is fairly low,” he says.

“We don’t expect broad transmission in Canada. We all know people are thinking about COVID, but it’s not COVID. It’s a very different virus.” 

– With files from Declan Finucane and The Canadian Press