All Your Hantavirus Questions, Answered by an Infectious Disease Expert

Here's what you need to know, from why the cruise ship outbreak won't spark the next pandemic to how hantavirus spreads. Now that more than 100 passengers aboard a hantavirus -stricken luxury cruise ship have been evacuated, 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. So far, all of the 11 reported hantavirus cases are among passengers or crew on the ship, the World Health Organization's director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference in Madrid on Tuesday. That includes three deaths resulting from the virus. Typically, hantaviruses are spread when contaminated rodent droppings and urine are stirred up in the air and breathed in.