Did we learn nothing from Covid?

[PistachioTiramisu]

I cannot believe that the people who were on board the cruise ship and who have contracted/been exposed to the hantavirus are all being repatriated! Why on earth were they not all kept on the ship until medical personnel were sure they were not infected? I don't care if they wanted to get home to their families - they are a potential danger. So now we have people in France, the UK and I think Japan who have travelled with other people back to their own country. It's madness.,

Described as "voluntary" on the news. They have been sent home to "self isolate" for 6 weeks. I have no confidence that they will do that.

Grow up and read the other posts on the thread before you reply? Prolonged contact had been document in a previous outbreak as not required.

I think that the media have been well and truly blowing this out of proportion. Yes, it needs to be managed but there's no reason to panic.

YABVU

I thought they were quarantined. Also if the rats on the ship pissing on the food etc are causing it, it’s likely that more and more people will become ill. They are removing the people from the cause, because it would be difficult to remove the source from the ship, until it’s empty.

Yep, these definitely sound like armchair virologists:

Donald K Milton, professor of environmental health, Trisha Greenhalgh, professor of primary care health sciences, David N Fisman, professor of epidemiology, Amanda Kvalsvig, associate professor of public health, Lidia Morawska, professor and director, Jonathan M Samet, professor of epidemiology and environmental and occupational health

What would they know?

The source appears to have been on a birdwatching excursion on shore. Not rats on the ship.

Well it doesn't look as though you learned to read the facts for starters. WHO has already said it's an isolated outbreak. It doesn't transmit easily human to human.

The lesson is, I think, that some cruise ships are breeding grounds for transmissible illnesses - norovirus for example, especially where passengers have less robust immune systems, i.e. there are more elderly passengers. There's one dealing with this at the moment that was covered on the news last night.

Just waiting now for Keir Starmer to come on telly telling us to sing Happy Birthday while washing our hands.

I think the whole point is we did learn. We learnt people can quarantine at home and it’s effective.

It's almost as if all the randomers on MN know more than the health authorities.

That is exactly the same as Covid times.

I think it's more MNetters continue to be incapable of following the basic facts of a news story.

The thread is full of people unaware it is a hantavirus known to spread from human to human, that close contact is not necessarily required for infection, that the mortality rate is high (40% or more), and that unlike most other countries involved, the UK has decided to isolate the passengers for a bare 72 hours and not 3 plus weeks, and that voluntary and not mandatory home quarantine will do.

I remember thinking, when covid first started to spread to Europe, that it was good we were an island so could secure our borders and stop incoming flights. Did we? ... did we heck!!

So we have indeed learned nothing ....

I’m surprised that the passengers sent here weren’t in supervised isolation for the duration of the incubation period. That’s what should happen. Although it’s much less easily transmitted that Covid and already circulates in the world.

And the truth is as well as actual death rates from viruses, i think we are all becoming more educated about the fact that surviving a virus doesn't necessarily leave you in the clear. Lots of people struggle with post-viral illness.

Dismissing things is never the wisest option. There is room for caution and prudence without hysteria.

And exactly how it happened here.

The source apparently wasn’t aboard the ship, it was picked up during a trip ashore.

It’s almost like it’s a completely different virus to Covid

Will they get furloughed?

You have no idea what is actually happening. The exposed people have been asked to stay in their own homes for 6 weeks. Previous figures for maximum incubation time have been 8 weeks, then 7 weeks.

Do you believe those people won't set foot outside their own homes, or invite anyone into their home, when they've felt perfectly healthy for a whole month? Are they staying away from the other people who live in their house or are those people going to work as normal?

Like others, I can't understand, given its fatality rate, why this quarantine is not in a secure unit.

Viruses mutate. The Covid virus varies in how infectious it was as different strains emerged. Delta is reckoned to have been between 40 and 60% more infectious than Alpha, for example.

No this is not Covid. No of course we shouldn't be panicking. But it's very difficult to understand why tighter biosecurity isn't being done while the numbers are so tiny, if only to reassure the public and stop them panicking.

About as different as Spanish Flu, Ebola and Covid are from each other, I guess.

It's not got a 40% fatality rate. It's 40% of those ill enough to be hospitalised.

That's a very different figure to 40% of those infected.

Current case fatality rate is 27% - of all infected, not just those hospitalised. Early on they can track all those infected - they were all on a ship - but that ability has now gone and they are relying on each passenger following isolation, and each country doing the same... but I think we already know that not everybody is doing things the same way.

"As of 13 May, a total of 11 cases, including three deaths, have been reported (case fatality ratio 27%)." https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2026-DON601

I never claimed to be an expert or an 'armchair virologist' - all I am saying is that Covid should have taught us to be very wary of ALL virus out breaks of any nature and take appropriate, sensible action. We all know that viruses mutate and because of that it COULD become easier to transmit from person to person - that's why the people should not have been put on long haul flights back to their own countries.

I’ve a fair idea what’s happening because l live in the local area of the hospital to which the passengers were transferred. The local news has been covering it. The UK Health Security Agency confirmed that the small number of individuals who had been isolating at home or elsewhere in England had been transferred to the hospital for assessment.

The passengers weren’t just asked to isolate for 72 hours, as a poster upthread suggested. They were hospitalised for 72 hours after being removed from the ship, and have tested negative for the virus. Residents were issued with a reassurance from the UK Health Security Agency to the effect that on leaving hospital, onward travel and self isolation would be managed with public health protections in place at every stage.