LOUISVILLE, Ky. (KT) — “This is not COVID.” That was the message from one Louisville physician when it came to concerns about the hantavirus.
Dr. Daniel Blatt, a pediatric infectious disease doctor at Norton Children’s Hospital, said there is almost no danger to the general public from the hantavirus outbreak that began recently on a Dutch cruise ship.
“The risk of getting it currently is extremely low because you would have had to have been either on the cruise ship or in very, very close contact with someone who was on that cruise ship, and all of those patients are being monitored by the public health authorities,” he said.
Blatt said the hantavirus is mostly transmitted by direct contact with rodent droppings, rodent feces or rodent urine. However, the Andes strain of the virus that broke out on the ship can be transmitted from human to human, though not very easily…