{"id":11982,"date":"2026-05-13T15:19:01","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T20:19:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11982"},"modified":"2026-05-15T12:26:05","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T17:26:05","slug":"all-your-hantavirus-questions-answered-by-an-infectious-disease-expert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/05\/13\/all-your-hantavirus-questions-answered-by-an-infectious-disease-expert\/","title":{"rendered":"Wired: All Your Hantavirus Questions, Answered by an Infectious Disease Expert"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/all-your-hantavirus-questions-answered-by-an-infectious-disease-expert\/\">Wired<\/a> <strong>Here\u2019s what you need to know, from why the cruise ship outbreak won\u2019t spark the next pandemic to how hantavirus spreads.<\/strong> <strong>Now that more<\/strong>&nbsp;than 100 passengers aboard a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/hantavirus-cruise-ship-what-you-need-to-know\/\">hantavirus<\/a>-stricken luxury cruise ship&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/oceanwide-expeditions.com\/blog\/press-update-m-v-hondius-11-may-2026-21-00-hrs-cet\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"have been evacuated, opens in a new window\">have been evacuated<\/a>, with 18 Americans in biocontainment units in Nebraska and Georgia, health officials around the world are working to monitor more than two dozen individuals who left the cruise and anyone with whom they might have come in close contact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So far, all of the 11 reported hantavirus cases are among passengers or crew on the ship, the World Health Organization\u2019s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said at a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=5ZWjQHlYdB0\">press conference<\/a>&nbsp;in Madrid on Tuesday. That includes three deaths resulting from the virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Typically, hantaviruses are spread when contaminated rodent droppings and urine are stirred up in the air and breathed in. The strain identified on board the cruise ship, the MV&nbsp;<em>Hondius<\/em>, is known as the Andes virus, and is the only type known to transmit from person to person. While the virus can cause serious disease and carries a high mortality rate, health officials say the hantavirus outbreak is unlikely to become a global crisis like the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wired Here\u2019s what you need to know, from why the cruise ship outbreak won\u2019t spark the next pandemic to how hantavirus spreads. Now that more&nbsp;than 100 passengers aboard a&nbsp;hantavirus-stricken luxury cruise ship&nbsp;have been evacuated, with 18 Americans in biocontainment units in Nebraska and Georgia, health officials around the world are working to monitor more than [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-headlines","category-hantavirus"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11982"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12039,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11982\/revisions\/12039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}