Twenty-four years ago, Arizona photojournalist Gilbert Zermeño, who contracted hantavirus after losing both his mother and sister to the illness, says news of the recent outbreak has been hard to process.
“I imagine I got the same feeling that every person who’s ever contracted hantavirus and still deals with the effects afterwards of it,” Zermeño told CBS News’ “The Daily Report.” “It takes you back, and it’s no less painful now than it was back then. It’s hard. I’m not going to lie.”
In 2002, Zermeño found out he contracted hantavirus after cleaning the family house in Texas following the death of his mother and sister. He had been exposed to rodent droppings and became infected and spent several days in a Phoenix hospital.
Health officials around the world are monitoring the deadly hantavirus outbreak linked to a Dutch-flagged cruise ship that has caused nine confirmed or suspected cases, including three deaths.
Zermeño believes online misinformation about the illness has panicked some of the public because of the word “virus.”
“But I’m here to just tell people, look, you need to do some research on this because it’s not as scary as COVID-19 was,” Zermeño said.
Ann Lindstrand, a World Health Organization representative in Cape Verde, told CBS News Tuesday that there was no risk of a pandemic-level threat given the low likelihood of human-to-human transmission. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
In a statement Wednesday, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, acting director for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that hantavirus “is not spread by people without symptoms, transmission requires close contact, and the risk to the American public is very low.”
Zermeño says his mother and sister were initially misdiagnosed, and doctors initially said the two died of sepsis, but later determined it was hantavirus. He said the rarity of the illness complicated his own diagnosis and treatment, but with the help of family members in the medical community, he was able to get a proper diagnosis.
“Listen to your medical professionals and have a plan in the event that you do feel that you were exposed to the hantavirus or to someone who had hantavirus,” Zermeño said. “The likelihood of you catching it from a person-to-person is minuscule.”
