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... The US's response to the outbreak ended on Sunday, June 21, with the final 42-day monitoring period wrapping up for passengers of the virus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius. But without explanation, the Department of Health and Human Services announced the end of the response today, June 24, with a press release dated June 23.
Anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. touted how HHS acted "swiftly" to respond to the outbreak and credited federal efforts for preventing "sustained transmission of hantavirus ... in the United States," despite no Americans bringing the virus into the country for sustained transmission to be possible.
"The successful conclusion of this response demonstrates the strength of a coordinated response to infectious disease threats that occur outside of our borders," Jay Bhattacharya added in the press release. Bhattacharya is acting as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention despite exceeding the 210-day limit for filling a Senate-confirmed position. "As a result, we prevented any new cases from arising in the US," he said.
Soon after the press release was sent out, the CDC held a very short press briefing about the response, during which an official continued to boast of the successful conclusion without directly answering any questions.
Excessive quarantines
Significant questions remain about the Trump administration's use of draconian quarantine orders during the response. Those orders exceeded those in Chile and Argentina, where the hantavirus in this outbreak (the Andes virus) is endemic. They also exceed what hantavirus experts recommend and what the CDC's own expert recommended.
Specifically, hantavirus has only been documented to spread when infected people are showing symptoms. Based on experiences from Chile and Argentina, where thousands of people have successfully quarantined amid Andes virus outbreaks, remote monitoring with daily symptom and temperature checks is sufficient. This is also what the World Health Organization has recommended.
Without explanation, Trump officials required potentially exposed, repatriated cruise passengers to either stay in a federal quarantine unit in Nebraska, where they were essentially in strict isolation, or, in some cases, people were allowed to go home if their local health authorities agreed to surveil them 24/7 and do twice daily in-person fever and symptom checks. Oddly, MV Hondius passengers who returned to the US before the outbreak was identified were not subject to this requirement once they were identified. ...
