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9 hours ago

How worried should I be about hantavirus?

The MV Honius cruise ship, where hantavirus has infected and killed multiple passengers. | AFP via Getty Images The details of the ongoing outbreak of hantavirus may sound uncomfortably familiar to all of us who lived through Covid-19: an aggressive pneumonia-like infection, a cruise ship quarantined with sick passengers, the world’s public health authorities on high alert. So it’s natural to have the follow-up question: Is this the next pandemic? Not likely, experts say, for one major reason: Hantavirus is not equipped for rapid transmission in the same way that the novel coronaviru...