What causes hantavirus in the US?

(NEXSTAR) – Three people are dead and others remain under surveillance amid an outbreak of a rare illness aboard a cruise ship.

On Wednesday, two patients with hantavirus and another suspected of having an infection were evacuated from the MV Hondius in Praia, Cape Verde, with the help of health workers clad in protective gear. The cruise ship then departed for Spain’s Canary Islands, keeping the nearly 150 still on board isolated in their cabins.

Three people have died, and one body remained on the ship, the World Health Organization said. Of eight recorded cases, five were confirmed by laboratory testing.

Health officials in Europe and Africa are trying to identify individuals who may have had contact with people who earlier left the ship, which departed April 1 from South America for stops in Antarctica and several remote Atlantic islands.

Meanwhile, the WHO has advised that this outbreak is not the start of the next worldwide pandemic.

“This is not the next COVID, but it is a serious infectious disease,” the WHO’s top epidemic expert, Maria Van Kerkhove, said. “Most people will never be exposed to this.”

Still, cases do appear in the U.S. The CDC began tracking the virus after a 1993 outbreak in the Four Corners region — the area where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah meet.

Through 2023, the most recent data........

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