What the (rather brief) history of hantavirus reveals about its spread

Health newsWhat the (rather brief) history of hantavirus reveals about its spreadMuch of scientists’ understanding of how humans get infected comes from a handful of outbreaks.Listen to this article with a free account00:0000:00Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials prepare a containment suit for a hantavirus field study in 2004. Smith Collection/Gado / CDC via Gado / Getty Images fileShareAdd NBC News to GoogleMay 12, 2026, 5:00 PM EDTBy Aria BendixScientists think the hantavirus, the deadly pathogen that has infected 11 passengers on a Dutch cruise ship, could be as old as humans. But much of their understanding of human cases comes from a handful of outbreaks within the past century.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.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.But it wasn’t until some 20 years later, in 1978, that scientists linked the virus to a rodent near the Hantan river in South Korea, which gave hantavirus its name. The first cases in North America were diagnosed in 1993. And in 1996, an outbreak in Argentina marked the first confirmed instance of person-to-person transmission. Hantavirus is rarer, but far deadlier than respiratory viruses like Covid or flu. Only one strain, which is not found locally in the U.S., is capable of passing between humans. That strain is the one involved in the cruise ship outbreak, which has forced passengers from across the world to quarantine.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.“Because the disease is so incredibly rare, it’s been very difficult to study in the sense that we don’t really have the numbers,” said Dr. Charles Chiu, a professor of laboratory medicine and infecti...