The Club PUBlication May 11, 2026

​CDC ‘not even a player’ in response to outbreak
It has left handling of hantavirus to WHO.
By MIKE STOBBE The Associated Press​

NEW YORK - No quick dispatching of disease investigators.
No televised news conference to inform the public. No timely health alerts to doctors.

In the midst of a hantavirus outbreak that involves Americans and is making headlines around the world, the U.S. 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.

To President Donald Trump, "We seem to have things under very good control," as he told reporters Friday evening.

To experts, the situation aboard a cruise ship has not spiraled because, unlike COVID- 19 or measles or the flu, hantavirus does not spread easily.

It has been health experts in other countries, not the United States, who have been dealing primarily with the outbreak in the past week.
"The CDC is not even a player," said Lawrence Gostin, an international public health expert at Georgetown University.

"I've never seen that before."
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 expected 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. Also, the CDC issued its first health alert to U.S. doctors, advising them of the possibility of imported cases.

The CDC's diminished role in this outbreak is an indicator 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, chief executive offi cer of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Early last month, a 70-yearold Dutch man developed a feverish illness on a cruise ship traveling from Argentina to Antarctica and some islands in the South Atlantic. He died less than a week later. More people became sick, including the man's wife and a German woman, who both died.

Hantavirus was first identified as a cause of sickness of one of the cases on May 2.

The World Health Organization swung into action and by Monday was calling it an outbreak. About two dozen Americans were on the ship, including about seven who disembarked last month and 17 who remained on board.

For decades, the CDC partnered with the WHO in such situations. The CDC acted as a mainstay of any international investigation, providing staff and expertise to help unravel any outbreak mystery and communicate to the public.

But this time, the WHO has been center stage. It made the risk assessment that has told people the outbreak is not a pandemic threat.

"I don't think this is a giant threat to the United States," said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of Brown University's Pandemic Center. But how this situation has played out "just shows how empty and vapid the CDC is right now."

The current situation comes after 16 tumultuous months during which the Trump administration withdrew from the WHO and has restricted CDC scientists from talking to international counterparts at times and embarked on a plan to build its own p ublic health network with individual countries.

The administration has laid off thousands of CDC scientists and public health professionals, including members of the agency's ship sanitation program.

The agency on Wednesday issued a short statement that said the risk to the American public is "extremely low," and described the U.S. government as "the world's leader in global health security."
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Said Nuzzo: "Not only was that not helpful, it actually does damage because a core principle of public health communications is humility."