Trump administration's hantavirus response assailed by Sen. Chuck Schumer

WASHINGTON — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Sunday said the nation’s response to the deadly hantavirus outbreak that emerged aboard a cruise ship in the Canary Islands is undermined because of previous health-worker firings by the Trump administration.

In a statement, the New York Democrat demanded the immediate rehiring of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cruise ship inspectors and port health station staff that he said are "needed to track Americans exposed to hantavirus."

"The very CDC inspectors and port health workers we need to track this virus, the people whose entire job is to keep deadly diseases off cruise ships and out of our country, Donald Trump fired them," Schumer said in a statement.

The senator repeated his demand for restoration of the jobs in letters to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He also called for the United States to immediately rejoin the World Health Organization, in order to better coordinate responses if an outbreak develops beyond the ship.

There was no immediate response Sunday from the White House or the Department of Health and Human Services to Schumer's remarks.

The CDC said Friday it had deployed a team of  public health researchers and medical professionals to the Canary Islands, where the Dutch-flagged MV Hondius was then still headed. That team was to conduct an exposure risk assessment for each American passenger and provide recommendations for the level of monitoring required.

From there, passengers from Turkey, France, ⁠the United Kingdom and the United States were expected to be evacuated to their home countries, followed by six people from Australia, New Zealand and Asia. The 17 American passengers were set to relay on a special chartered flight to Nebraska, home to the national quarantine unit and the Nebraska biocontainment unit, according to the CDC.

Since the vessel departed Argentina last month, at least three deaths had been linked to hantavirus, which is typically caused by exposure to rodents.

In a statement Friday, the CDC said: "At this time, the risk to the American public remains extremely low."

The WHO also has sought to underscore that hantavirus is different from the COVID-19 virus and poses a lower risk to the public.

Published reports last month said Kennedy had laid off full-time employees in the CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Program as part of a budget-cutting move, leaving as few as 12 U.S. public health inspectors to oversee all current and future inspections.

In his letters Sunday, Schumer gave Kennedy and Rubio until May 17 to provide the precise number of full-time CDC staff working on the hantavirus response, current staffing tied the Port and Vessel Sanitation programs, and details of the Trump administration’s communication with WHO officials.

He is also seeking the plans to coordinate with local governments around arrivals and health screenings of Americans returning from a ship.