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Sam Dominguez

Sam Dominguez

Samuel Dominguez, MD, PhD — Professor of Pediatrics-Infectious Diseases at University of Colorado and Medical Director of Clinical Microbiology at Children's Hospital Colorado

Jun 4, 2026

4:51
Yeah.
4:52
Yeah, so that's a great question.
4:54
Um, and I think it has to do with some cultural issues within Africa, as well as some, uh, infrastructure issues that are happening right now in that part of the world.
5:03
So first of all, as I mentioned, uh, you have to have close contact with someone who's sick.
5:07
Um, there isn't, uh, a really good health infrastructure currently in the DRC where this is happening.
5:13
It's really in an area of armed conflict, um, that's been going on for a while.
5:17
It's also in a area that has a lot of gold mines, and so there's a lot of migratory population there.

9 MINS LATER

14:03
Mm-hmm.
1:48
Why don't we start out with the cruise ship and why it's made such big news recently?
1:53
So should just tell the story first, I think.
1:56
So this is a cruise ship that started in South America.
1:59
It's actually a relatively smaller cruise ship.
2:00
I think there's about 160-so people, including the s- the, the staff and the, uh, passengers.
2:08
And, um, one of the passengers became ill very suddenly, uh, uh, about, I think a week or two into the trip, and developed severe pulmonary edema, cardiogenic shock, and then was, uh, eventually died on the boat.
2:22
Uh, and then after that, two more people got sick.

5 MINS LATER

7:32
And so what they found is that both host factors, leading to more likely having ability to transmit Andes virus in that case, as well as day of fever onset being really high risk factors for transmission.

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