NBC News: experts including Dr Ashish Jha (Harvard) say Andes strain may be more contagious than originally thought after some passengers contracted without prolonged exposure

NBC News (May 11-12 2026): 'It has been assumed that the virus is contagious only if someone is in close contact with someone who is having symptoms. Some experts now suggest it is possible it may be more contagious than thought.' Dr. Ashish Jha, senior fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School, on NBC TODAY: 'What we are hearing now, including from the doctors who were on the ship, is that at least a few people contracted it without that long, prolonged exposure that we have always assumed.' This framing pushes against the WHO/ECDC + CDC line that Andes hantavirus requires 'close, prolonged contact' to transmit human-to-human - a tenet underpinning the May 10 disembarkation strategy and the 42-day quarantine clearance window. CDC's parallel statement via the same article (Dr. Brendan Jackson, acting director of high-consequence pathogens): 'the risk to the American public is extremely low.' The two framings co-exist: officially CDC/WHO/ECDC continue to say close-prolonged-contact remains the transmission model, while academic-and-clinical commentary is opening up the possibility that the threshold for transmission in this cluster may be lower than historically assumed.

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NBC News

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hantavirus