90-Second Read: What the (rather brief) history of Hantavirus reveals about its spread

Scientists think the Hantavirus, the deadly pathogen that has infected 11 passengers on a Dutch cruise ship, could be as old as humans. The limited number of past outbreaks could offer clues about how the cruise ship passengers got sick, but doctors who have studied Hantavirus said there's more to learn. Tom Boo, the public health officer for Mono County, a rural area in California that has recorded 27 Hantavirus cases since 1993, the most in the state. The first known outbreak came during the Korean War in the 1950s, when around 3,000 United Nations troops developed a mysterious illness that scientists would later recognize as Hantavirus.

Up to half of Hantavirus cases can be fatal, depending on the strain and method of transmission. Most human cases of Hantavirus in North America are the Sin Nombre strain and are acquired through contact with the aerosolized urine, feces or saliva of infected rodents. The Andes strain is the only Hantavirus known to spread from person to person. Here's what we know about the major outbreaks over the last several decades.

Hantavirus is rarer, but far deadlier than respiratory viruses like Covid or flu. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ultimately confirmed the illnesses as Hantavirus based on antibody testing and autopsies. Scientists learned more about human transmission after so-called "super-spreader" events in Argentina in 2018 and 2019. Before those measures were taken, one infected person was spreading the virus to about two others, on average.

Hantavirus gained further attention last year after Betsy Arakawa, the wife of Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman, died of the virus at the couple's home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A 2020 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine determined that patients with a high viral load were more likely to spread the virus, and that transmission was more likely to occur at massive social gatherings or if someone had extensive contact with an infected person. Public health authorities eventually contained the outbreak by isolating symptomatic patients and telling their close contacts to stay home.