Doctor points warning over rat virus as ‘blood vessels leak and lungs fill with fluid’
Top virologist Dr Jay Hooper has warned of the risks of catching terrifying rodent-borne Hantavirus which kills 35% of those infected
Top virologist Dr Jay Hooper has warned of the impact of hantavirus(Image: ARGENTINE HEALTH MINISTRY/AFP via Getty Images)
A deadly “perfect storm” has left a luxury cruise ship in a grim mid-Atlantic quarantine after a terrifying rodent-borne virus began tearing through passengers. The MV Hondius is currently a floating isolation ward with more than 140 people trapped on board.
The nightmare began during a voyage from Argentina to West Africa. The scale of the horror came to light this week, with three people confirmed dead and at least seven others undergoing treatment.
Top virologist Dr Jay Hooper has now warned that the conditions which led to the outbreak are chillingly specific. Speaking to the Daily Mail, he said: “It takes a very, very rare window for all of these things to happen.”
The culprit is believed to be Hantavirus, a brutal disease carried by wild rodents. Experts suspect two passengers may have inhaled infected rodent waste while birdwatching in Ushuaia, Argentina, before boarding the ship and unknowingly spreading it.
Dr Hooper, the Deputy Chief of Virology at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, described the gruesome way the virus attacks the human body.
He said: “If there was enough rodent waste that is aerosolized – gets into the air – you could be infected that way. You could probably be infected by eating food that’s been contaminated by rodents.”
Once inside, the virus wages war on the body.. Dr Hooper said: “The hantavirus infects endothelial cells, which are the lining of your blood vessels. They cause dysfunction so your blood vessels leak. It’s horrific.”
As the disease progresses, the lungs fill rapidly with fluid.
Hantavirus boasts a terrifying 35 per cent fatality rate and has no standard cure.
The current outbreak involves the Andes strain. It is the only version of the virus known to jump from human to human via “saliva” and “other bodily fluid transmission.”
Despite the high death toll on the MV Hondius, Dr Hooper noted that a global pandemic is unlikely because the virus is much harder to catch than Covid.
He said: “It would have to be a perfect storm of the infected person in the small window when they are contagious, when they’re shedding the virus and in close contact with somebody who gets a high enough dose to cause an infection.”
Dr Hooper has spent decades trying to develop a vaccine and believes this tragedy should serve as a wake-up call for the world to take “eco-tourism” risks seriously.
He added: “I’ve always thought that eco-tourists, those people who bushwhack around in places where this could happen, were at risk. I’m kind of surprised that they ended up on a cruise ship and a bunch of other people were trapped there with them.”
Health authorities are now on high alert as nearly two dozen passengers have already returned to their home countries. However, Dr Hooper remains optimistic that if the world finds the will, a vaccine could be fast-tracked.
He said: “If there was a desire to rapidly move a vaccine forward, we could do it. With industrial partners, we could do it.”
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