As hantavirus outbreak unfolds, the CDC is missing in action, experts say. ‘I’m very sorry to say that we are not prepared’
No quick dispatching of disease investigators. No news conference to inform the public. No timely health alerts to doctors. In the midst of a strange outbreak of hantavirus on a cruise ship that involves Americans and is making headlines around the world, the U.S. government’s top public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been missing in action, according to a number of experts. “We seem to have things under very good control,” President Donald Trump told reporters Friday evening. But experts say the situation has not spiraled because, unlike COVID-19 or measles or the flu, hantavirus does not spread easily. It has been experts in other countries, not the United States, who have been dealing primarily with the outbreak in the past week. “The CDC is not even a player,” said Lawrence Gostin, an international public health expert at Georgetown University. “I’ve never seen that before.” The CDC’s diminished role in this outbreak is an indicator the agency is no longer the force in international health or the protector of domestic health that it once was, some experts said. The hantavirus outbreak is “a sentinel event” that speaks to “how well the country is prepared for a disease threat. And right now, I’m very sorry to say that we are not prepared,” said Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, chief executive officer of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. How the outbreak unfolded Early last month, a 70-year-old Dutch man developed a feverish illness on a cruise ship traveling from Argentina to Antarctica and some islands in the South Atlantic. He died less than a week later. More people became sick, including the man’s wife and a German woman, who both died. Hantavirus was first identified as a cause of sickness of one of the cases on May 2. The World Health Organization swung into action and by Monday was calling it an outbreak. About two dozen Americans were on the ship, including about seven who disembarked l