Can Hantavirus Spread Worldwide?

Happy Friday! A Tribeca gallery in New York City is inaugurating today a temporary “library” devoted entirely to the Epstein dossiers, housing the full 3.5 million pages. For your summer beach reading, consider instead turning to the New York Public Library.

American and Iranian forces engaged in hostilities on Thursday as Iranian units attacked three U.S. naval vessels in the Strait of Hormuz using drones, missiles, and small boats. U.S. Central Command labeled the strike as “unprovoked” and directed American forces to respond with “self-defense” strikes on Iranian military facilities. In reply, American forces targeted two Iranian ports—Bandar Abbas and Qeshm Island— striking launch sites, command centers, and intel hubs. Tehran asserted that U.S. forces struck two additional Iranian port towns, Bandar-e Khamir and Bandar Sirik, along with two vessels tied to Iran that were near or entering the Strait. Trump offered a non-committal impression on whether the clash violated the ceasefire, describing the skirmish to ABC News as a “love tap,” while Iran denounced the strikes as a violation.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade on Thursday halted Trump’s universal 10 percent tariff announced February 20, the same day the Supreme Court struck down most of his “reciprocal” tariffs. In a 2-1 decision, the court held that Trump misused Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 to impose the sweeping tariffs. The statute permits duties only when facing “fundamental international payments problems,” such as significant government payment deficits or currency depreciation. The ruling applies solely to Washington state and two plaintiffs—the toy maker Basic Fun! and spice importer Burlap and Barrel—until the appeals court resolves the case, leaving the duties in place temporarily for others.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced fresh sanctions on entities tied to the Cuban regime on Thursday, including GAESA, a military-owned conglomerate, and one of its leaders, as well as the partially state-owned mining company MNSA. The measures follow an executive order issued by Trump last Friday, broadening the ability of federal agencies to sanction Cuba-related bodies. Officials cited to the Associated Press indicated the administration isn’t planning military action against Cuba at present, framing the sanctions as a signal that the White House seeks changes to the regime’s policies rather than seeking regime change.

A Chinese court issued death sentences on Thursday to two former defense ministers, 72-year-old retired Gen. Wei Fenghe and 68-year-old ex-Gen. Li Shangfu, on charges of corruption and bribery while in office. The generals are among the highest-profile figures swept up in Xi Jinping’s recent purge, with Wei removed in March 2023 and Li ousted six months later. In 2024, the Chinese Communist Party accused both of graft. Chinese state media reported that Wei was convicted of taking bribes during his tenure, while Li is said to have both taken and dispensed bribes. It remained unclear how either man pleaded or whether they had legal representation. Their sentences carry a two-year reprieve, during which their fate is likely to be reduced to life imprisonment without parole.

The online prediction-market Kalshi, based in New York, announced on Thursday that it has secured $1 billion in a funding round led by Coatue Management, valuing Kalshi at $22 billion—more than doubling its $11 billion valuation from a December funding round.

In its Thursday release, the company said more than half of global prediction-market activity occurs via Kalshi, including over 90 percent in the United States, and that in the last six months it has more than tripled the annualized trading volume from $52 billion to $178 billion. Kalshi stated that its annualized revenue this month surpassed $1.5 billion.

In late January 2020, an 80-year-old boarded the Diamond Princess in Yokohama with a cough. It stood among the first major outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2 outside China. As the British cruise ship sailed from Yokohama to Hong Kong, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Okinawa and back, the still-new virus spread across the vessel.

About a fifth of those aboard became infected, and as many as 14 people died. In total, more than 7 million people worldwide were later confirmed to have died from COVID-19.

Six years on, a different pathogen is circulating at sea. Five confirmed cases—and three additional suspected—of hantavirus have been traced to the MV Hondius, a Dutch cruise liner that ran itineraries through Antarctica and Argentina. Three passengers have died from this rodent-borne disease, for which no cure exists.

Argentine investigators believe a Dutch couple who recently completed a multi-country bird-watching trip in South America were the first to contract the illness. The husband and wife died, as did a German woman who was aboard the ship.

The Spanish government allowed the Hondius and around 150 remaining passengers to dock in the Canary Islands, where the ship will be isolated. A man who fell ill on board has been evacuated to a hospital in South Africa, while three other passengers were moved to hospitals in the Netherlands and Germany. Everyone aboard will be repatriated gradually after health screenings, though some travelers had already left the ship before quarantine began.

A Swiss national fell ill upon returning home and sought care in Zurich. Singapore has isolated two residents who were aboard and is testing them to confirm their status. Authorities in California, Georgia, Arizona, Virginia, and Texas are monitoring travelers who disembarked in their states, though no symptoms have been confirmed yet.

“The State Department is coordinating a comprehensive, whole-of-government response, including direct contact with passengers, diplomatic outreach, and collaboration with domestic and international health authorities,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted on its website Thursday.

The Andes strain—identified by South African scientists as the variant aboard the Hondius—kills roughly 30 to 40 percent of those it infects.

COVID remains a hot political topic in the United States, especially among senior health officials who rose to prominence for opposing certain public-health measures and vaccine protocols tied to the prior pandemic. Hantavirus is unlikely to be the next global emergency, but if it arrives, the nation—and by extension much of the world—appears ill-prepared to respond.

Hantavirus—historically described in Chinese medical texts for millennia—was first isolated and named in 1978 by South Korean virologist Ho Wang Lee after an outbreak of so-called “Korean hemorrhagic fever” that struck UN troops stationed near Korea’s Hantan River during the Korean War. Lee and later researchers uncovered a family of viruses that spread via rodent bodily fluids and feces, each capable of causing hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) in hosts, with death rates ranging from under 1% to 15%.

Until 1993, scientists believed these viruses were mostly confined to Europe and Asia. But that May, a mysterious illness appeared predominantly among Navajo people in the Four Corners region (where Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico meet), killing several young, healthy individuals. Among the early victims was a 19-year-old long-distance runner whose influenza-like symptoms worsened and led to respiratory failure during a road trip.

By year’s end, 48 cases were confirmed nationwide, with 27 fatalities.

“It was a deeply alarming and disturbing development,” Dr. Robert Breiman, an epidemiologist at Emory University who led the CDC’s initial investigation into the 1993 outbreak, told TMD. “It was disproportionately killing young, healthy people, just before our eyes.”

Investigators later linked the symptoms to the rodent-borne Korean hemorrhagic fever and began trapping local wildlife, identifying the Western deer mouse—the population of which had surged due to heavy rainfall—as the virus carrier.

That case marked the first hantavirus outbreak in the Americas capable of infecting humans. In subsequent years, more hantavirus strains causing hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome were discovered across North and South America. One of these, the Andes virus, is the only hantavirus shown to transmit between humans—and scientists from South Africa and the World Health Organization have now confirmed it as the culprit behind the Hondius outbreak.

And yet, hantavirus is unlikely to become the next global pandemic.

“It doesn’t spread as COVID or flu does, where transmission is widespread,” said Steven Bradfute, an immunologist at the University of New Mexico who studies hantaviruses, to TMD. “Person-to-person transmission occurs mainly through close contact—sharing a bed, sharing meals, things like that.” A large American hantavirus outbreak would likely cause only dozens of deaths, far fewer than COVID’s toll of over 1.2 million Americans.

Nevertheless, new diseases that jump from animals to humans, such as hantaviruses, pose a greater threat in coming decades. “Looking at emerging pathogens over the past 40 years, you see a growing tendency toward zoonoses,” said Dr. Nahid R. Bhadelia, founder of Boston University’s Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases and former White House adviser on the COVID-19 response, to TMD.

Human expansion and climate-change-driven shifts in wildlife populations are increasing the likelihood of animal-to-human infections. In Italy, mosquitoes carrying West Nile virus are introducing the disease to regions previously unaffected. In France, chikungunya—fever and joint pain—spreads as warmer summers boost mosquito numbers. COVID-19 remains among the most devastating zoonotic events in modern history, and its origins—whether from a wet market or a lab leak—continue to be debated.

“That’s a strong reminder of why we need better surveillance and faster responses,” noted Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at Stanford University, to TMD.

Yet, at a moment when the risk of cross-border infectious diseases is drawing more public attention, the United States has scaled back many of the tools it historically used to monitor biological threats. On January 22, the U.S. formally left the World Health Organization after signaling its intent a year earlier. The withdrawal not only reduces international collaboration but also deprives the world of the funding and leadership the U.S. previously provided as the agency’s largest single contributor.

“When the WHO is weaker, that burden falls more on us,” Lipsitch said, noting that although the U.S. still has robust disease surveillance capabilities through agencies like the CDC, the WHO had filled critical gaps for less-equipped nations. “The rest of the world is more likely to be the source of pandemics than we are,” he told TMD.

The United States has also reduced its ability to investigate distant outbreaks. Breiman told TMD that White House-driven cuts to the NIH and USAID have compromised programs such as the NIH’s Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases, which supported projects like tracing Rift Valley fever transmission in East Africa. The objective to detect outbreaks persists, but the capacity has waned. “We still have intelligence and some connectivity, but our strategic vision isn’t as clear as it once was.”

This breakdown in coordination is mirrored at home.

“The biggest complaint I hear from state and local officials is that they rarely hear from the CDC about threats that arise abroad or domestically,” Jennifer Nuzzo, director of Brown University’s Pandemic Center, told TMD. “And they’re not getting clear guidance on what to do next.”

The CDC has now gone eight months without a Senate-confirmed director, and last month the agency announced it would temporarily halt tests for numerous pathogens it previously aided state laboratories to detect. The list included rabies and monkeypox, leaving those teams at minimal staffing levels.

Under the Biden administration, Washington frequently convened outside experts to address threats like avian flu. “Those gatherings paused under Trump,” Nuzzo observed.

And beyond coordination, public health policy has been uneven. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. resisted publicly endorsing the measles vaccine during a Texas-area outbreak that infected over 700 people, instead promoting remedies like cod liver oil. After public pressure, he finally backed the MMR shot months after the outbreak began; in South Carolina—where almost 1,000 cases occurred—Kennedy largely avoided urging vaccination even as federal support funded a state campaign.

Kennedy’s skepticism about mRNA technology, which underpins the most effective COVID-19 vaccines and speeds the development of new vaccines, remains. Last year, HHS cut nearly $500 million in funding for mRNA research, jeopardizing both basic science and the viability of mRNA-based treatments.

“We should be exceptionally well-prepared for the next pandemic,” said Donald G. McNeil Jr., longtime New York Times science writer, to TMD. “Yet the top health leadership may resist actions we’d need in a real crisis.”

And yet, the system could be tested soon. With the World Cup slated to take place in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada this summer, there will be an unprecedented mass gathering, attracting visitors from many countries,” Bhadelia cautioned. “That includes potentially hundreds of thousands from Canada, where vaccination rates lag behind the U.S.” She warned that the current reductions could come back to haunt public health readiness.

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