A deadly hantavirus outbreak aboard a cruise ship carrying passengers from 23 nations has exposed the cost of America's abrupt departure from the World Health Organization. With the U.S. now outside the institution it helped build, public health experts warn the country is losing critical real-time intelligence about emerging infectious disease threats.
The crisis aboard the Dutch-operated vessel, which has killed three passengers and sickened at least five others, is exactly the type of international emergency the WHO was designed to coordinate. Yet American health officials no longer have the direct access to outbreak surveillance data and contact tracing information they once relied on, according to epidemiologists and former government health security officials.
The U.S. severed its relationship with the WHO in January after 78 years of membership, terminating all funding, pulling staffers from WHO offices, and withdrawing from committees and working groups. President Trump cited the organization's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic as the reason for the exit.
The practical consequence is stark. When hantavirus cases emerged aboard the cruise ship, CDC scientists who would ordinarily have been part of international teams analyzing the virus now risk learning the results secondhand, delayed by days or weeks. Amira Albert Roess, a professor of global health and epidemiology at George Mason University, explained the loss. "The access that we got as being members and as being important donors to WHO is gone," she said.
Stephanie Psaki, who coordinated global health security under the Biden administration and is now a senior fellow at Brown University's School of Public Health, described how information sharing worked when the U.S. remained plugged into WHO networks. Experts at the organization and CDC often knew about disease outbreaks for days or weeks before the public announcement. By withdrawing, the U.S. has surrendered that advantage.
The White House insists the situation remains manageable. Spokesman Kush Desai stated that the administration is "working closely with our international partners to provide technical assistance and guidance to mitigate risk," while the CDC has convened experts on the Andes virus strain. The State Department has maintained direct contact with cruise ship passengers, according to statements from the Department of Health and Human Services.
WHO officials acknowledged that information sharing continues through other channels. Anaïs Legand, WHO's technical lead for viral hemorrhagic fevers, told reporters the organization exchanges updates with the U.S. under international health regulations that require countries to report public health threats of international concern. "We have very positive, regular interaction almost every single day," she said.
But those official rules-based channels move slower than the informal, trusted relationships that existed when America sat at the WHO's table. Psaki raised another concern: the absence of a CDC public briefing about the outbreak despite confirmed American infections and passengers traveling back to the U.S. "It doesn't inspire confidence when it's already public that people have traveled back to the U.S. before there's any information shared by CDC," she said.
The cruise ship currently has nearly 150 people confined to their cabins. More than two dozen passengers from 12 countries disembarked on April 24 in St. Helena, including six Americans now scattered across Arizona, California, Georgia, and Virginia. Seventeen American passengers remained aboard as of Monday, with the vessel headed toward the Canary Islands for possible evacuations.
The first two deaths were a Dutch couple who had visited bird-watching sites in Argentina where rodents carrying the virus live. A German woman died May 2, days after developing symptoms. The Andes strain, primarily carried by the pygmy rice rat of South America, is the only hantavirus version known to spread between humans, though such transmission typically requires close, prolonged contact.
Hantavirus causes fever, fatigue, nausea, and respiratory distress. Around 230 cases were recorded in the Americas last year, with a fatality rate up to 50 percent in the region. The virus has no known cure. With an incubation period stretching to six weeks, more cases may emerge among those who traveled.
The National Public Health Coalition, comprising current and former CDC employees, issued a stark warning. "This is a critical example of why the U.S. needs global public health partnerships," the group said. "The withdrawal from the World Health Organization puts people in the U.S. at higher risk and raises an important question: Are countries still sharing information with the U.S. quickly enough to keep us safe?"
Psaki offered a broader assessment of the stakes. "Even when there are lots of actors involved who have the capacity and willingness to contain the threat and respond to the threat, it happens more quickly and often more effectively when the U.S. government is involved," she said.
Author Sarah Mitchell: "Cutting off American disease surveillance expertise doesn't make the U.S. safer from outbreaks, it just means we'll learn about them later and further from where they start."
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