Indian-origin scientist Jai Bhattacharya has urged Americans not to panic over a hantavirus outbreak linked to a cruise ship off Spain’s Canary Islands, insisting the situation is “not COVID” and unlikely to turn into a large-scale public health crisis.Speaking on CNN’s ‘State of the Union’ on Sunday, the acting director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the outbreak was being controlled under long-established hantavirus prevention protocols that have worked successfully in the past.“I don’t want to create panic among the public,” Bhattacharya said.He said: “We want to treat it with our hantavirus protocols that have been successful in preventing outbreaks in the past.”“The main message I want to send to your audience is that this is not COVID. This is not going to cause (the same) kind of outbreak,” he said. “We should not panic when the evidence does not warrant it.”The outbreak occurred on the expedition cruise ship MV ‘Hondius’, which was carrying about 150 passengers. At least three travelers have died since April 11, while five others have become seriously ill with hantavirus symptoms, according to World Health Organization (WHO) officials.Hantaviruses are commonly associated with rodents and can cause severe respiratory illness, fever, vomiting, and diarrhea. The CDC says about 38 percent of patients who develop respiratory symptoms die from the disease. However, health experts stress that the virus spreads much less easily than COVID-19 and typically requires close contact for person-to-person transmission.The ship has since docked near the Canary Islands, where passengers have begun to disembark. Seventeen Americans were reportedly aboard the ship, some of whom were to be quarantined at a specialist facility in Nebraska after returning to the US.Bhattacharya defended the CDC’s response, saying that health officials have already contacted affected passengers and are monitoring the situation closely.“CDC is in contact with each passenger,” he said.He said: “We are interviewing with them, and we are preparing to move them to the University of Nebraska facility at the University of Nebraska, which is a fantastic facility.”He said the agency was following the same strategy it used during the 2018 Andes hantavirus outbreak in Apuyan, Argentina, which killed 11 people.“This will include the advice given to these travelers, including offering to stay in Nebraska if they wish, or if they wish to return home, and their home situation allows it, taking them home safely without exposing other people along the way,” he said.Seven American passengers had already left the ship weeks before the first deaths were reported. He later traveled to states including Arizona, California, Georgia, Texas and Virginia. Hantavirus symptoms can take up to six weeks to appear, so health officials are still monitoring them.Bhattacharya also explained why the CDC is not tracing every airline passenger who may have traveled near those individuals.“The passengers on the plane who were flying home had no symptoms,” he said. “Since the virus does not spread unless someone has active symptoms, those passengers on the plane are considered exposed contacts.”“There is no reason to do this kind of repetitive contact tracing,” he said.Bhattacharya also heads the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and was confirmed by the US Senate last year. He was born in Kolkata and is a professor of health policy at Stanford University and became known internationally during the Covid-19 pandemic as the co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which criticized lockdowns and vaccine mandates.