Post Goes Viral After Hantavirus 'Prediction': What We Know
The X account "iamasoothsayer" contains only four posts, all dating back to June 2022. One post states, "2023: Corona ended 2026: Hantavirus." The post now has over 255,000 likes, 100,000 reposts and 21,000 replies.
The meaning of the post is unclear, and the X user has not clarified the comment. The account's bio says that it, "reads the future," and has "Astrologist" as a profession. The account joined X in June 2022.
Hantaviruses have been around for centuries and are thought to exist around the world. The virus usually spreads when people inhale contaminated residue of rodent droppings.
Could the Hantavirus Become a Pandemic?
Global health officials have said the virus is unlikely to become a pandemic due to its extreme lethality.
"Pandemic potential is mostly about transmission architecture, not lethality," Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, previously told Newsweek. "The biology that drives pandemics is how a pathogen moves between people—not how sick it makes them."
Virologist Thomas G. Ksiazek said the virus is "not new to the world."
If it were going to become an epidemic, it would have happened a long time ago," Ksiazek previously told Newsweek.
Maria Van Kerkhove, director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness at the World Health Organization, said hantavirus " is not the next COVID, but it is a serious infectious disease."
"Most people will never be exposed to this," Van Kerkhove said.
How Many Cases of Hantavirus Are in the US?
As of the end of 2023, 890 cases of hantavirus disease were reported in the U.S. since surveillance began in 1993, according to the CDC.
At least four U.S. states are monitoring people who have returned home from the cruise ship struck by a hantavirus outbreak, health officials have said.
One Virginia traveler who was on the ship "is currently in good health, not showing any signs of infection, and is under public health monitoring," the Virginia Department of Health previously told Newsweek.
Health departments in Arizona, California and Georgia are monitoring individuals who were on the ship. Health officials have not announced any cases of hantavirus in the U.S. linked to the outbreak on M/V Hondius cruise ship.
Where Did the Hantavirus Outbreak Originate?
Tests have confirmed that at least five people who were on the ship were infected with the Andes virus, a hantavirus found in South America. The Andes virus is the only hantavirus thought to spread human-to-human, and it can cause a severe and potentially fatal lung disease called hantavirus pulmonary syndrome.
Investigations into where the virus originated are ongoing with a focus on Argentina, where the ship departed.
A Dutch couple that presented the first two cases of the virus were in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay on a bird-watching trip before boarding the ship, the WHO said. The trip included visits to sites where the species of rat known to carry Andes virus was present.
Argentina's health ministry reported 28 deaths from hantavirus last year, which was an increase from an average mortality rate of 15 in the five years before that.
This article includes reporting by The Associated Press.