Public health experts are questioning the U.S. government's response to the hantavirus outbreak aboard a cruise ship that involves Americans. But President Donald Trump says “we seem to have things under very good control.
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Here's what to doA photo captures President Trump and first lady awaiting British royals from rare White House angleThe World in PicturesWhat to know about the predictions for a potentially record-breaking El NinoFDA's new playbook: Lots of media announcements but not much rulemakingWhat is hantavirus, the infection that killed Betsy Arakawa, Gene Hackman’s wife? One Tech Tip: Don't use rice for your device.
Here's how to dry out your smartphoneDear Readers: Yes, pen pal programs still exist in a digital worldAmy Grant reflects on her new album, resisting labels and writing dark songsPolicía libera a 2 personas tras alarma de rehenes en banco alemán, pero no halla a perpetradoresDespite a cruise ship outbreak of a rare rodent-borne illness, global health officials say the risk to the general public remains low because hantavirus germs do not easily spread between people. Spanish authorities were on Saturday preparing to receive more than 140 passengers and crew members on board a hantavirus-stricken cruise ship headed for the Canary Islands, where health officials have said they will perform careful evacuations.
Preparations were underway at Granadilla port, where the vessel is expected to arrive on Sunday. An isolated staging area was being built at Tenerife’s Granadilla Port ahead of the arrival of the more than 140 passengers and crew members on board the ship. A Spanish Civil Guard officer inspects the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026.
Health workers in protective gear evacuate patients from the MV Hondius cruise ship into an ambulance at a port in Praia, Cape Verde, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. Crew members of the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, wait their turns for a first interview with epidemiologists, during the voyage to Spain’s port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026.
Workers set up temporary shelters in the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026. Passengers on the the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, watch epidemiologists board the boat in Praia, during their voyage to Spain’s port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026.
Despite a cruise ship outbreak of a rare rodent-borne illness, global health officials say the risk to the general public remains low because hantavirus germs do not easily spread between people. Spanish authorities were on Saturday preparing to receive more than 140 passengers and crew members on board a hantavirus-stricken cruise ship headed for the Canary Islands, where health officials have said they will perform careful evacuations.
Preparations were underway at Granadilla port, where the vessel is expected to arrive on Sunday. An isolated staging area was being built at Tenerife’s Granadilla Port ahead of the arrival of the more than 140 passengers and crew members on board the ship. A Spanish Civil Guard officer inspects the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026.
A Spanish Civil Guard officer inspects the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026. Health workers in protective gear evacuate patients from the MV Hondius cruise ship into an ambulance at a port in Praia, Cape Verde, Wednesday, May 6, 2026.
Health workers in protective gear evacuate patients from the MV Hondius cruise ship into an ambulance at a port in Praia, Cape Verde, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. Crew members of the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, wait their turns for a first interview with epidemiologists, during the voyage to Spain’s port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026.
Crew members of the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, wait their turns for a first interview with epidemiologists, during the voyage to Spain’s port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. Workers set up temporary shelters in the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026.
Workers set up temporary shelters in the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026. Passengers on the the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, watch epidemiologists board the boat in Praia, during their voyage to Spain’s port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026.
Passengers on the the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, watch epidemiologists board the boat in Praia, during their voyage to Spain’s port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. NEW YORK — No quick dispatching of disease investigators. No news conference to inform the public. No timely health alerts to doctors.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. 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.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 last month and 17 who remained on board. For decades, the CDC partnered with the WHO in such situations.
The CDC acted as a mainstay of any international investigation, providing staff and expertise to help unravel any outbreak mystery, develop ways to control it and communicate to the public what they should know and how they should worry. Such actions were a large reason why the CDC developed a reputation as the world’s premier public health agency. But this time, the WHO has been center stage.
It made the risk assessment that has told people the outbreak is not a pandemic threat.
“I don’t think this is a giant threat to the United States,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of Brown University’s Pandemic Center. But how this situation has played out “just shows how empty and vapid the CDC is right now,” she said.from talking to international counterparts at times and embarked on a plan to build its own international public health network through one-on-one agreements with individual countries.
The administration has laid off thousands of CDC scientists and public health professionals, including members of the agency’s ship sanitation program. The CDC has not been completely silent on hantavirus. The agency on Wednesday issued a short statement that said the risk to the American public is “extremely low,” and described the U.S. government as “the world’s leader in global health security.
” Said Nuzzo: “Not only was that not helpful, it actually does damage because a core principle of public health communications is humility. ”on social media that the agency was lending its expertise in coordinating with other federal agencies and international authorities. Arizona officials this week said they learned from the CDC that one of the Americans who left the ship — a person with no symptoms and not considered contagious — had already returned to the state.
WHO officials said the CDC has been sharing technical information. The CDC also is “monitoring the health status and preparing medical support for all of the American passengers on the cruise,” Bhattacharya wrote. But federal health officials have mostly been tight-lipped, declining interview requests. Some details emerged not through public statements but through disclosures from anonymous sources, including news Friday that the CDC was sending a team to Spain’s Canary Islands to meet the Americans onboard.
On Friday evening, health officials issued an updated statement, confirming the deployment of a team to the Canary Islands. They also said a second team will go to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska as part of a plan to evacuate American passengers from the ship to a quarantine center.
In interviews this week, some experts made a comparison with a 2020 incident involving the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship docked in Japan that became the setting of one of the first large COVID-19 outbreaks outside of China. , shared genetic data on the virus, coordinated with the WHO and Japan, held public briefings and rapidly published reports “that became the world’s reference data on cruise ship COVID transmission,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, a former CDC director.and it did not halt the outbreak or stop COVID-19’s spread across the world.
But some experts say it was not for the CDC’s lack of trying.
“The CDC was right on top of it, very visible, very active in trying to manage and contain it,” Gostin said, while the agency’s work now is delayed and subdued. Instead of working with nearly all of the world’s nations through the WHO, the Trump administration has pursued bilateral health agreements with individual nations for information sharing, public health support, and what it describes as “the introduction of innovative American technologies. ” Roughly 30 agreements are currently in place.
That’s not sufficient, Gostin said.
“You can’t possibly cover a global health crisis by doing one-on-one deals with countries here and there,” he said. Associated Press writers Ali Swenson in New York, Darlene Superville in Washington and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed to this report. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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