In Fighting Ship Virus, Expert Says, 'CDC Is Not Even a Player'

No quick dispatching of disease investigators. No televised news conference to inform the public. No timely health alerts to doctors. In the middle of a hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship that involves Americans and is making headlines around the world, the US government's top public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been uncharacteristically missing in action, according to a number of experts. It has been health experts in other countries, not the US, who have been dealing primarily with the outbreak in the past week, the AP reports. "The CDC is not even a player," said Lawrence Gostin, an international public health expert at Georgetown University. "I've never seen that before."

The situation aboard the MV Hondius hasn't spiraled because, experts say, because unlike COVID-19 or measles or the flu, hantavirus does not spread easily. "We seem to have things under very good control," President Trump told reporters Friday evening. Not until late Friday did CDC actions accelerate. Health officials confirmed the deployment of a team to Spain's Canary Islands, where the ship was due to arrive early Sunday local time, to meet the Americans onboard. They said a second team will go to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska as part of a plan to evacuate American passengers from the ship to a quarantine center. And the CDC issued its first health alert to US doctors, advising them of the possibility of imported cases.

The CDC's diminished role in the battle is an indicator that the agency is no longer the force in international health or the protector of domestic health that it once was, some experts said. The hantavirus outbreak is "a sentinel event" that speaks to "how well the country is prepared for a disease threat. And right now, I'm very sorry to say that we are not prepared," said Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, CEO of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. The CDC's ability to carry out health inspections of cruise ships was decimated a year ago, CBS News reported: The Trump administration laid off every full-time employee in the CDC's Vessel Sanitation Program—though fees charged the companies paid the staff.