Washington – Jay Bhattacharya, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, defended the federal government's response to the killers. hantavirus outbreaksaying that it makes no sense to sound a “five-armed fire bell” because the risk to the public is “much, much lower” than what we saw with the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It's very different than COVID, and we have to treat it differently than COVID,” Bhattacharya told “CBS Evening News” host Tony Dokoupil on Monday when asked about the lack of daily briefings on the outbreak.
Bhattacharya, who also heads the National Institutes of Health, said hantavirus is “a very dangerous disease when you get it,” but added that “the epidemiological risk is very, very different.” than COVID.
“Unlike COVID, the way people get it from one person to another, it is very difficult for that to happen,” he said of the way the virus spreads.
There have been at least three deaths and 10 confirmed or suspected cases of this rare, rat-borne disease linked to an outbreak on the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius, which had been sailing in the Atlantic Ocean.
Eighteen American passengers were on board he returned to the US on Monday and are being monitored at medical facilities in Nebraska and Georgia.
According to health officials, the hantavirus outbreak identified on the cruise ship is the Andes strain of the virus, which can spread between people but requires prolonged contact with a sick person.
Bhattacharya said the US has been tracking the outbreak for several weeks and is working with state and local health departments, as well as the World Health Organization and foreign governments, in the response.
Speaking about the potential risk to the public, Bhattacharya said the CDC does not want to cause unnecessary panic.
“The important thing is that we should make the public aware if there are threats to it, not to cause the public to panic, not to speculate about things that cannot happen, or that may happen in a certain area,” he said. “And to be very clear, what we know and what we don't know, and to respond appropriately when there is danger, as we did.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized the Trump administration this week cuts last year in the CDC's Vessel Sanitation Program, which investigates outbreaks and health checks on cruise ships. Schumer, a Democrat from New York, called the decision “incompetence”.
“The very CDC inspectors and port health workers that we need to track this virus, people whose entire job is to keep deadly diseases on cruise ships and out of our country, Donald Trump fired them. This White House will tell you that the risk to the American people is low. How do they know? They made it difficult to find,” Schumer said in a statement on Sunday.
Bhattacharya told CBS News that in his two and a half months in the role leading the CDC, he saw “absolutely no gap in the outbreak control team.” Bhattacharya said the inspection team had done “an amazing job.”
Bhattacharya also said the US is prepared for any possible outbreaks during the upcoming World Cup, which will be jointly hosted by the US, Mexico and Canada in June and July.
“Of course, whenever so many people travel, there is always the possibility of outbreaks of various diseases or the like,” he said. “But the risk is no different than in other World Cups that we've managed properly. And the United States has plans in place to make sure that if something happens, we respond appropriately.”
