Health Officials Trying to Trace and Contain Deadly Hantavirus Outbreak

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Alex Ossola (0:18)

What we know about the hantavirus that has killed three people on a cruise ship and sickened several more. Plus Ted Turner, who helped shape modern cable TV, has died at age 87

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Chip Cutter (0:35)

The days of sort of certainty and routine and having a clear career path are kind of over.

Alex Ossola (0:41)

It's Wednesday, May 6th. I'm Alex Ossola for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM Edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today.

We start our show today talking about hantavirus. It's a rare but deadly disease that's in focus right now after an outbreak on a cruise ship that's killed at least three people.

Now, a man in Switzerland who had been a passenger on that cruise ship has been hospitalized with the virus. He got sick after returning from a trip to South America at the end of last month. For more on the outbreak, I'm joined by WSJ reporter Xavier Martinez. Xavier, why are people concerned about this outbreak?

Xavier Martinez (1:21)

The concern here is that most hantaviruses only spread from rodents like mice or rats to humans. That's how they reach humans. But there is one strain found in South America called the Andes virus, and that can transmit between humans. And so the concern is that this outbreak on board a cruise ship is that Andes strain.

Alex Ossola (1:43)

So if you do get this, what happens?

Xavier Martinez (1:46)

Well, there's no vaccine, there's no real treatment. All doctors can really do is monitor patients and address the symptoms as they come up. There is a fairly high death rate for people who do progress to having certain symptoms, like a particular lung infection that occurs in the strains that are found in the Americas.

Alex Ossola (2:05)

So the cruise ship where the outbreak seems to be concentrated is currently anchored near Cape Verde, off the coast of West Africa, and there are around 150 people on the ship. What are health officials in Switzerland where this one patient was found and other places doing to contain the outbreak?

Xavier Martinez (2:21)

Right now, public health officials are tracing the Swiss man's whereabouts since he left the ship. They're looking at the people that were on the plane with him to Switzerland. They're looking at the bars that he went to, the restaurants, the public spaces where he was at, and that's in an effort to see whether those individuals who he was in the same room as are showing any symptoms. And that contact tracing is going to continue on because the virus has an incubation period of between one and eight weeks, which means that the virus could be in someone's body, but they're not showing symptoms.

Our understanding is that there's a number of additional passengers who left the cruise ship, and the World Health Organization and other public health agencies are undergoing contact tracing for those individuals as well.

Alex Ossola (3:07)

Does it seem likely that more cases will occur?

Xavier Martinez (3:10)

That's a question that researchers are trying to figure out right now. They're sequencing the genome of this virus to see if it has similar or different characteristics to ones that we've previously documented.

However, I should say that the Andes virus, that strain that's found in South America, researchers have found that it has often transmitted between people who are in very close quarters. Think romantic partners and things like that. It's not something that's like COVID or the flu, where you can be in the same room as someone coughing and you're likely to pass something between people.

Alex Ossola (3:44)

That's a little bit of good news there. That was WSJ Reporter Xavier Martinez. Thanks Xavier.

Xavier Martinez (3:48)

Thank you.

Alex Ossola (3:55)

In Markets today, enthusiasm around chip stocks like Intel and AMD and hopes for a peace deal in the Middle East are driving stocks higher. The NASDAQ climbed 2%, leading the gains in the indexes. It closed at a record. So did the S&P. Developments in the Iran War, which I'll tell you more about later in the show, caused big drops in oil prices. The international benchmark Brent and US crude oil futures both fell 7% or more.

A development in a sexual assault and harassment case has gone viral on Wall Street. Former JP Morgan investment banker, Chirayi Rana, has sued the bank, alleging that a female colleague sexually assaulted him and that coworkers at the bank discriminated against him. Now the journal has learned that weeks before the suit was initially filed, JP Morgan offered a million dollars to settle the claims. Per WSJ reporting, Rana rejected the offer and asked for more money. A JP Morgan spokesman said that the bank did try to reach an agreement and that it believes that Rana's allegations have no merit.