In mid-May 2026, CNN, the New Republic and USA Today reported that Dr. Brian Christine, Trump's Assistant Secretary for Health at HHS, had become a leading figure in the federal response to the Andes hantavirus outbreak linked to the cruise ship MV Hondius. On May 11 he spoke to reporters at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, where some returning passengers were quarantined, promising a response “grounded in science” and “grounded in transparency.”
Before joining the administration, Christine was an Alabama-based urologist who specialized in penile implants. CNN reported he has little public health experience. Years earlier he hosted a YouTube series called “Erection Connection,” a professional show on erectile dysfunction for fellow urologists. As assistant secretary he heads the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and serves as a four-star admiral.
A CNN review of archived podcast episodes, posts and radio appearances found Christine had said “the government and the left have used the pandemic to control people,” claimed the Covid vaccine “ultimately was proved not to prevent the disease and not to prevent the spread of the disease,” compared the Biden administration to Nazi Germany, and suggested “George Soros and the World Economic Forum” may have used the pandemic to push small businesses under. At his 2025 confirmation hearing, he did not directly say whether he recommends the Covid vaccine, calling it something with “inherent risks and benefits.” Christine responded on X that CNN was “baselessly smearing people as 'far-right' conspiracy theorists.”
By USA Today's count the outbreak had sickened at least 10 people and killed three, and more than 40 people in the U.S. were being monitored; experts called the risk to the public low. Andes virus is the only hantavirus with documented human-to-human spread, and the Institut Pasteur says the severe cardiopulmonary form it causes has a case fatality rate that can reach 30 to 60%. Separately, the 2025 shutdown of the NIH's CREID research network ended a pilot project in Argentina studying how hantavirus passes from rodents to humans; its former lead said it almost certainly would not have prevented this outbreak (see The Trump Administration Cut a Hantavirus Research Project Months Before a Deadly Andes Virus Outbreak on a Cruise Ship).
Correction (October 2, 2026): The entry said Christine was leading the federal hantavirus response, currently hosts 'Erection Connection,' and that the canceled CREID work had studied human-to-human transmission by saliva and aerosol. Reporting describes him as helping lead the response; the YouTube series was in the past; and the canceled Argentina pilot studied rodent-to-human transmission. It also gave Andes hantavirus a historical fatality rate of 30 to 50%; the Institut Pasteur puts the severe form at up to 30 to 60%. The headline was changed to match.