When the novel coronavirus surged into a life-altering global pandemic, infectious diseases specialist, Dr. Isaac Bogoch, emerged as a go-to voice for clarity in the midst of crisis.
Now that hantavirus is dominating headlines, he’s once again being inundated with a barrage of contagion queries.
One question keeps popping up, and Bogoch is quick to smack it down.
Is the worry over hantavirus warranted?
“I’m not here to tell people to become anxious or not,” he told CityNews on Tuesday. “I just provide facts and data and people can feel however they want to feel.”
The facts, he stressed, are that the world has known about hantavirus for decades and if handled properly it shouldn’t snowball into an out-of-control situation.
“We’ve known about this virus for about 30 years,” he explained.
“The most recent outbreak of this was 2018 in Argentina, there were 33 people infected. We know this is a rare virus (and) of course it can cause very severe illness. That outbreak (in 2018), just like the prior outbreaks, was quelled relatively quickly with routine public health measures. Those exact same public health measures are being taken right now.”
It seems like the right steps are being taken (so far) to quell this hantavirus outbreak: the @WHO is coordinating across multiple countries, large scale contact tracing is underway, several Canadians are quarantining after returning home, and ill passengers are receiving care.
— Isaac Bogoch (@BogochIsaac) May 7, 2026
Eleven people died in the 2018 outbreak, and three have passed away in connection to the cruise ship outbreak — a testament to the seriousness of the illness which originates in rodents.
“Hantaviruses are not to be messed with,” he stressed.
“This is a very rare, but still very serious virus and even healthy young people who get this infection can get very ill and succumb to this illness and we know that from past outbreaks.”
A Chilean study from ~20 years ago found that 3.4% of household contacts exposed to Andes virus (hantavirus) became infected, with the highest risk among sexual partners.
Viral RNA was detectable in blood 5-15 days before symptom onset.https://t.co/lhQ0aELXP6 by Ferres et al. pic.twitter.com/zEAROFGG1C
— Isaac Bogoch (@BogochIsaac) May 11, 2026
Bogoch said it’s not surprising that there’s been a growing number of positive cases internationally since the evacuation of the MV Hondius ship Sunday on an island in Spain’s Canary Islands, and he says more will likely emerge.
“We are going to see more cases, absolutely we are going to see more cases,” he said. “There’s a long incubation period and there were a number of people who were exposed to this virus, those individuals who were exposed, some of them may ultimately get sick with this virus, that’s not unexpected.”
The Andes virus (ANDV), identified as the strain that spread on the MV Hondius ship, is the only one known to spread from human-to-human.
“A cruise ship is sort of like a venue where you expect to see more amplified transmission dynamics compared to other venues,” he added. “You have a lot of people breathing the same air, living in close proximity to each other that’s kind of a scenario where you would expect to see more transmission. That’s why most certainly there will be more secondary cases from this outbreak, but is this Covid? No, it’s not.”
Risk to general population is low: Public Health Agency of Canada
The Public Health Agency of Canada currently assesses the overall risk of acquiring ANDV for the general population as low (moderate uncertainty), “given that onward spread within Canada is not expected, even if an infected individual were to arrive in Canada.”
Ten people currently in Canada may have been exposed to the virus and are being monitored.
Bogoch said now is the time for health officials to contain the virus.
“They key thing to look for is to ensure that there are no subsequent chains of transmissions from those people who were exposed,” he said. “So if the people who were exposed, if some of them get sick, we have to of course provide them with appropriate medical care, we just don’t want to see subsequent chains of transmission after that.”
While there’s currently no medicine, or vaccine, for hantavirus, Bogoch says there are “a couple of drugs that may have some activity against this, but it’s not like there’s a ton of patients and a lot of clinical trials looking at this.”
1/ A 2011 laboratory study suggested that ribavirin may have both therapeutic & post-exposure potential against Andes hantavirus. Outbreaks are tragic, but they also create a narrow window to empirically & ethically evaluate whether these approaches can actually work in humans. pic.twitter.com/MNlb2NMQQl
— Isaac Bogoch (@BogochIsaac) May 11, 2026
“The complicating matter here is that it’s international,” he said.
“It’s not just in one country, so there’s a lot of coordination that needs to be done, but if everyone does what they’re supposed to do, which isn’t hard to do, this will be over sooner rather than later.”
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