Cruise ship in the center of hantavirus outbreak dock
The cruise ship at the center of the hantavirus outbreak has arrived in Spain, and authorities have begun sending passengers back to their home countries for quarantine.
Shaina Montiel still remembers the ambulance ride.
When Montiel was 5 years old, around Halloween, he felt sick for about a week. She was vomiting frequently and had abdominal pain. At first, doctors told the family it was just the flu. But as her symptoms worsened and the antibiotics she was prescribed had little effect, it became clear that something else was going on.
Montiel’s parents eventually took her to the hospital, where another doctor discovered the truth. Montiel has hantavirus and needs to go to a children’s hospital immediately for supportive care and close monitoring.
Montiel said her mother still cries as she recalls her harrowing experience with hantavirus. Depending on the type of syndrome caused by the virus, the fatality rate can be up to 38%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Montiel said that at the time of her infection, one of her doctors told her that she was the youngest patient he had ever seen to survive the virus.
“My mother said she remembers when she sent me to the ER and she told me, ‘I’m going to see you, but there’s a possibility that I’ll wake up and be in heaven,'” Montiel said. “And I was like, ‘Okay, that’s fine. That’s fine. I want to go to heaven.’
Montiel, now 38, said it was surreal to see the little-known virus that nearly claimed her life 30 years ago make international headlines in the past week, as a deadly hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship sparks fear around the world. Montiel hopes that by sharing his story, he can help others understand the seriousness of hantavirus infections while keeping concerns about widespread spread in perspective. “While this is a serious incident, WHO assesses the public health risk as low,” the World Health Organization said in a May 7 press conference.
“When I caught it, no one else in my family caught it,” Montiel says. “No one else in my neighborhood was infected, so I guess I was really unlucky.”
She thought it was just the flu. It was hantavirus.
Montiel’s parents realized something was seriously wrong when their daughter suffered from extreme fatigue and could no longer walk. They took her to more doctors, all of whom claimed it was just the flu. One night, Montiel’s mother woke up to find her daughter’s bed sheets stained red with blood. This is said to be the result of hemorrhage and bloody diarrhea caused by the virus.
According to the CDC, there is still no cure for hantavirus. When Montiel contracted the disease, doctors could only offer symptomatic treatment because her body had to either fight the virus or succumb to it. Thankfully, she fought it off, but it wasn’t easy.
Her body was swollen. She had a painful rash. It took her a week in the hospital before she finally returned to normal. Doctors told her family they could not believe she had survived.
“My mom told me that the doctor ended up crying before I left because he said, ‘You’re a miracle. Miracles happen every day, and you’re a miracle, too,'” Montiel said.
Thirty years later, the shadow of the hantavirus still looms over Montiel’s life. As a result, she developed an emetophobia. It also gave her health concerns. A lingering fear that someday hantavirus or some other deadly pathogen will infect her again.
“Ever since I was a child, I was always afraid that it would happen again or that I would die by the time I was 10,” she says. “After what I went through, I was always scared that I wasn’t going to make it. So I was just waiting for something bad to happen, because I knew, ‘Okay, in the meantime you were going to die.’
The fear of hantavirus persists
It’s not entirely clear how Montiel contracted hantavirus, which is primarily transmitted through exposure to rodent urine, feces and saliva. She thinks they were probably playing in the backyard.
“At the hospital, my mother had no idea what this virus was,” Montiel said. “She had never heard of anything like that. So she said, ‘I’m always very careful with my kids. What did I do wrong?'” And they told her, “You didn’t do anything wrong.” This is spread through rodents. ”And we are always outdoors and live in an area with lots of wildlife and nature near hills. ”
Six years after the outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), some people on social media are comparing hantavirus to the coronavirus and speculating that it could cause a pandemic. Dr. Maria van Kerkhove, WHO’s director of disease and pandemic management, said that would not happen. “This is not the beginning of an epidemic,” she said at a recent hantavirus briefing. “This is not the beginning of a pandemic.”
Montiel believes that’s true, but he also understands why some people have concerns about hantavirus.
“It’s very surreal, because when I was a kid I wanted to know more about hantaviruses,” she says. “It’s so weird to see people talking about it. It’s like it’s in another dimension or something. I can’t believe it’s in the headlines because it’s such a rare virus.”
