The hantavirus outbreak on the luxury cruise ship MV Hondius has reignited old hoaxes and conspiracy theories on social media. As with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, hordes of misinformation and seemingly serious claims, lacking any scientific basis, have once again spread around this new outbreak, which is of a completely different scale and nature than the pandemic of six years ago.

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The first patient involved in the hantavirus outbreak boarded a ship in Ushuaia, Argentina, unaware that he was carrying the virus that would trigger a health crisis. The passenger and his wife, both Dutch, had been traveling around Argentina for weeks before boarding the MV Hondius, an expedition ship. The leading hypothesis is that they “were infected off the ship,” according to the WHO.

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Fernando Simón’s reappearance in some media outlets, claiming that the risk of hantavirus is “very low” for Spain, has reminded many people of the initial public statements made by the director of Spain’s Coordination Center for Health Alerts and Emergencies (CCAES) before Covid-19 became a pandemic. While infectious diseases do have a degree of unpredictability, this situation is completely different; hantavirus bears little resemblance to SARS-CoV-2.

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