COVID-19 expert says hantavirus won’t be the next pandemic

The public health expert who led the White House’s response to the coronavirus pandemic under the Biden administration says the hantavirus outbreak currently unfolding on a cruise ship will not become the next global pandemic.

“I’m concerned about the people on the boat. I’m not concerned about everybody else,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was appointed White House COVID-19 response coordinator by then-President Joe Biden in 2022, said Friday on “Good Morning America.”

“This is not going to turn out to be some pandemic,” Jha continued. “This is not a virus that spreads that easily. If you’re sitting at home watching, you’re going to be fine.”

Hantavirus, a virus that can cause serious illness and death, has emerged in the headlines due to an outbreak aboard the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius, which departed from Argentina in early April.

To date, three people who were aboard the ship are known to have died of the virus, and the total number of confirmed cases associated with the outbreak is increasing, according to health officials.

Hantavirus previously made headlines last year after being identified as the cause of death of actor Gene Hackman’s wife Betsy Arakawa, after the couple was found dead at their New Mexico home in February 2025.

Jha, now a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, answered “GMA” viewers’ questions Friday about the virus and what people should know.

Will hantavirus become the next COVID-19 pandemic?

No. According to Jha, hantavirus does not have the potential to become the next COVID-19 pandemic, which sent countries around the world into lockdown in 2020 and led to more than 1 million deaths in the United States alone.

“COVID spread very, very easily, and it spread even when you didn’t have symptoms,” Jha said. “None of that is true for hantavirus. So this is something that is going to kind of burn itself out in the upcoming weeks or months.”

How rare is hantavirus?

Not only is hantavirus rare, but the strain identified in the cruise ship outbreak is “very rare,” according to Jha.

“Hantavirus itself is pretty rare. This strain is rare — it’s the only one where you get spread from person to person,” he said. “I don’t see this becoming some big global outbreak.”

Less than 900 cases of hantavirus disease have been reported in the U.S. between 1993, when surveillance for the disease began in the U.S., and the end of 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

What is the type of hantavirus in the latest outbreak, and how does it spread?

The strain of hantavirus in the suspected cluster has been determined to be the Andes virus, which has been known to spread person-to-person, according to the CDC.

Jha noted that unlike COVID-19, hantavirus takes a long time to spread from person to person.

“With COVID or flu, people sitting next to each other longer, you know, hanging out, they can infect each other,” Jha said. “With the Andes strain, it takes prolonged exposure over many, many hours before you can infect somebody.”

Hantavirus is also only spread through people with symptoms, according to Jha. Symptoms of hantavirus typically appear one to eight weeks after contact with the virus and may include fever, fatigue and muscle aches, the CDC states.

Human-to-human transmission of hantavirus is rare and only suspected for the Andes strain, which originated in South America, according to the World Health Organization.

Hantaviruses are usually spread through rodents, including rats and mice, mostly from exposure to urine, droppings or saliva. Although the viruses can spread through a rodent bite or scratch, such infection is rare, according to the CDC.

What happens to people aboard the cruise ship who are not infected with hantavirus?

The MV Hondius is expected to arrive in Spain’s Granadilla Port on Sunday, at which point passengers wearing full hazmat gear will be transported by bus to the airport.

From there, the passengers will begin boarding aircraft by nationality with 23 nationalities onboard in total, according to health officials.

Jha said passengers and public health officials will be monitoring closely for hantavirus symptoms.

“You don’t spread this virus until you have symptoms. So if they don’t have symptoms, they’re fine,” he explained. “If they get fevers, get any of those other symptoms, then they’ve got to get isolated, they’ve got to get tested.”

Health officials in multiple U.S. states say they’re monitoring some passengers who have already returned to the U.S. after being onboard the ship for potential hantavirus infections.

Is the world prepared for another global pandemic?

Jha said that while hantavirus shows no signs of becoming a global pandemic, it is a reminder that countries need to be ready for the next pandemic to strike.

“We’re going to get this under control, but we should be vigilant, because we now live in a world where disease outbreaks that happen in one place become global quickly,” Jha said. “And we’ve got to have the system to manage all that, absolutely.”

Jha said he believes the U.S. in particular needs to take steps to better prepare for future pandemics, including investing in disease surveillance and research on vaccines and treatments.

“We’ve got to get our act together and get prepared, because if it’s not hantavirus, it’s going to be something else down the road, and we should be much more prepared than we are,” he said.

ABC News’ Mary Kekatos contributed to this report.