Hantavirus
Medical Expert Pumps Brakes on Pandemic 2.0 Panic
Published
The hantavirus scare is giving some people COVID flashbacks … but this virus apparently doesn’t have the same bite.
Dr. Ashish Jha — the former White House COVID response coordinator — stopped by “TMZ Live” to tell everyone to exhale a little over the deadly outbreak aboard the MV Hondius … because while he’s worried about people exposed on that ship, he tells us this thing is NOT shaping up to be another COVID-style nightmare.
Check it out … he assures us, “This is not gonna be a pandemic. That’s not how this virus is going to behave.”
Jha says the biggest concern right now is passengers who were packed together for hours at a time aboard the ship — not random people brushing past each other in public. According to him, hantavirus simply doesn’t spread easily enough to spiral into a global pandemic.
“You’re not gonna get it passing somebody in a grocery store. You’re not gonna get it kind of through casual contact,” he said.
He added that the virus only appears to spread once someone is already showing symptoms — meaning fever, headaches and feeling sick are the real red flags — not healthy-looking people quietly walking around during the incubation period.
Jha says that’s a huge distinction from the early days of COVID … when asymptomatic spread became one of the biggest problems on the planet.
The incubation period — which can stretch for weeks — is what’s freaking a lot of people out … but Jha says there’s still no evidence people without symptoms are spreading the virus.
And for anyone worried hantavirus could suddenly mutate into a super-strain the way COVID did … Jha says experts have already genetically analyzed the current outbreak strain and so far, it looks basically identical to previous versions seen over the last several decades.
