Wednesday | 13rd May 2026
Since the first signs of the outbreak emerged, the message from governments, health agencies and medical authorities has been strikingly consistent: there is no need for panic. Officials across the United States and abroad have repeatedly stressed that the hantavirus outbreak linked to the cruise ship MV Hondius remains limited, manageable and fundamentally different from the catastrophic early spread of Covid-19.
At a briefing on Monday, US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sought to reassure the public when asked about the Andes strain of hantavirus that has now spread from a cruise ship into a wider quarantine effort.
“We have this under control, and we’re not worried about it,” Kennedy said.
Standing beside him, President Donald Trump echoed that message, emphasizing that hantavirus is neither a novel pathogen nor one that spreads easily.
“The thing about this one,” Trump said, “it’s much harder to catch. It’s been around for a long time. People are very familiar with it. I hope it’s fine.”
Those reassurances are aimed at a public still haunted by memories of the Covid-19 pandemic — a global crisis that claimed millions of lives, crippled economies and reshaped daily life across the world. Federal and state authorities have repeatedly emphasized that the current hantavirus outbreak does not resemble the terrifying uncertainty that marked the early days of Covid six years ago.
Experts note that the comparison is valid in several important ways. Although infection with the Andes strain of hantavirus can cause severe illness and even death, it is nowhere near as contagious as diseases such as measles, influenza or Covid-19. That lower transmissibility means outbreaks are generally easier to contain through isolation, contact tracing and targeted precautions.
Health authorities have also pointed out that unlike Covid-19 — which emerged as a completely new virus in humans — hantaviruses have been studied for decades. Scientists already understand much about how they spread, how they affect the body and how outbreaks can be controlled. Even though knowledge of the Andes strain remains incomplete, previous outbreaks in South America have provided valuable scientific data and practical experience.
Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization continue to say that the overall risk to the general public remains low, even as officials acknowledge that additional cases are likely to emerge in the coming weeks.
Yet despite those reassurances, some public health experts worry that authorities may be projecting too much confidence too early. They argue that efforts to calm public fears could ultimately backfire if later developments contradict the current messaging.
According to these critics, overly definitive statements risk eroding trust — particularly in a post-Covid world where many people vividly remember officials revising guidance as scientific understanding evolved.
That tension became especially visible late Sunday, after 18 passengers from the MV Hondius returned to the United States. The Department of Health and Human Services announced that one passenger had tested “mildly PCR positive” for the Andes strain of hantavirus.
The wording immediately drew criticism from infectious disease specialists and physicians online.
“Fortunately, the receiving facility is equipped to handle this. But whoever wrote that someone tested ‘mildly positive’ is an idiot,” said Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and editor of the medical news outlet MedPage Today. “They have it.”
During a Monday briefing, CDC official Dr. Brendan Jackson attempted to clarify the statement, explaining that the passenger had received two tests before arriving in the United States — one positive and one negative — and that further testing would be needed to determine the final diagnosis.
Still, for many experts, the episode highlighted broader communication problems surrounding the outbreak.
Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious disease specialist at UT Southwestern Medical Center who has also worked with the World Health Organization, questioned the lack of precision in the government’s explanation.
“What does ‘mildly PCR positive’ mean?” she wrote on social media. “Symptomatic or not? Confirmed or suspected? What testing was done? Clear, precise public health communication matters.”
She warned that vague messaging creates dangerous openings for confusion and misinformation.
“This is another example of the leadership void we are seeing and when messaging is vague, misinformation fills the gaps,” she added.
For some observers, the communication challenges surrounding hantavirus evoke uncomfortable memories of the early Covid era, when scientific uncertainty often collided with public demands for certainty.
Dr. David Berger, an Australian physician who previously served as a ship doctor for Oceanwide Expeditions — the same company operating the MV Hondius — believes authorities should have learned from those mistakes.
He pointed specifically to comments made last week by WHO officials praising the effectiveness of containment measures onboard the ship.
“We haven’t seen further onward spread,” WHO health emergencies communication manager Nyka Alexander told Sky News. “Once those control measures were put in place, the control is effective.”
Berger argues that such statements may be premature given the virus’ unusually long incubation period, which can stretch from six to eight weeks before symptoms appear.
“When you’ve known about this situation for four or five days, you can’t then go and say, ‘Oh yes, all the measures are effective,’” Berger said.
According to him, the long delay between exposure and symptoms means authorities cannot yet confidently determine whether transmission has truly stopped.
“Any informed observer looks at that and goes, ‘Well, you’re just bullshitting, because you can’t absolutely say that,’” he added bluntly.
Berger describes this tendency as “calm-mongering” — the practice of offering excessive reassurance before enough evidence exists to justify it.
Dr. Peter Sandman, one of the pioneers of crisis and risk communication and a longtime professor at Rutgers University, believes health officials should adopt a far more nuanced approach.
In his view, authorities first need to acknowledge why the public is anxious before attempting to reassure them.
“Every reassuring message should have a verbal asterisk,” Sandman said. “We don’t know as much about hantaviruses as we wish we did.”
He argues that officials should openly recognize the parallels many people see with Covid rather than dismissing those fears outright.
According to Sandman, public trust would be strengthened if health leaders admitted uncertainty while explaining how decisions are being made in real time.
Instead of declaring that everything is fine, he says officials should explain that experts are actively considering worst-case scenarios while continuing to evaluate new evidence.
One of the most important facts repeatedly emphasized by health authorities is that hantaviruses are usually transmitted through exposure to urine, saliva or droppings from infected rodents. Human-to-human spread is considered extremely rare and has been documented primarily with the Andes strain circulating in South America.
Even then, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last week that transmission between humans appears limited mainly to situations involving close and prolonged contact, such as among intimate partners, household members or healthcare workers.
But some scientists caution against making firm conclusions too early.
During a briefing hosted by the Infectious Diseases Society of America, Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo — the infectious disease expert who previously led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — warned that scientific understanding could change rapidly.
“This whole issue of transmissibility, we have to emphasize what we know might change tomorrow — or even in an hour,” Marrazzo said.
“We really have to have humility here in terms of making pronouncements about definitive routes and percentages and transmission in particular, because this is changing very rapidly.”
She added that scientists would likely learn a great deal from the current outbreak, though potentially “at the cost of lives.”
Research from previous outbreaks underscores why some experts remain cautious. A detailed study published in the New England Journal of Medicine examining a 2018 Andes virus outbreak in Argentina documented instances in which transmission appeared to occur after only brief encounters.
In one case, a person reportedly became infected after merely greeting a symptomatic individual while passing by on the way to a restroom during a birthday party.
Dr. Stephen Kornfeld, the physician who took over as doctor aboard the Hondius after the previous ship physician fell ill, has similarly noted that not all infected passengers had extensive close contact with sick individuals. Some appeared to have encountered infected people only in shared communal spaces such as dining halls and lecture areas.
That uncertainty worries experts like Dr. Joseph Allen, a professor of exposure science and environmental health at Harvard University.
“If we get this wrong,” Allen warned on social media, “those in quarantine take the wrong precautions — or we don’t isolate them — and the spread continues.”
At the same time, many scientists stress that the outbreak still differs fundamentally from Covid-19 in ways that favor containment.
Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health, explained that diseases with shorter incubation periods spread much faster because infected people become contagious before authorities can intervene.
The flu typically incubates within one to four days, while Covid symptoms usually appear within two to fourteen days. By contrast, the Andes virus can take weeks before symptoms develop.
That longer incubation period may actually help public health officials by providing more time to identify exposed individuals, monitor them and interrupt chains of transmission before new cases emerge.
Still, experts acknowledge that the social and psychological shadow of Covid looms heavily over every aspect of the current outbreak.
Dr. Traci Hong, a professor of media science at Boston University’s College of Communication, says public exhaustion and distrust are now deeply intertwined with outbreak messaging.
“We’re definitely in a post-Covid fatigue moment,” Hong said.
On social media, she sees growing references to the “rat virus” alongside accusations of government “calm-mongering,” illustrating how quickly public narratives can become polarized.
According to Hong, health officials now face a difficult balancing act: avoiding unnecessary panic while also acknowledging uncertainty honestly.
“I think there is a lot of hard work where we have to communicate to the public that science isn’t certainty,” she said. “Science lives on uncertainty, but people aren’t accustomed to that.”
For Hong, the challenge extends beyond managing the current outbreak. She believes public health agencies must fundamentally improve how they communicate the evolving nature of scientific knowledge itself.
“This is what we know now,” she said, describing the kind of message officials need to emphasize, “and we all have to stay aware and prepared that there might be a new update.”
“That’s a possibility we need to live in.”