Is Hantavirus the Next Pandemic Threat? An Expert Weighs In

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]I I want to ask the obviously big question that a lot of people are asking. Does this have the potential to become a pandemic? The risk is very very low to become a pandemic. We are not dealing with a COVID-19. And there's a few reasons for that. One is we know about this virus. We knew about it since 19 It's not a novel virus like COVID-19 was. We have contained it in the past.

[00:00:28]This The second reason is because it looks like, although it is an unanswered question, um that most of the transmission is from close contact. You won't get it if you go to a Walmart, for example, like we saw with COVID-19. The third reason that's really, you know, keeping my anxiety down is that this virus hasn't mutated in a meaningful way.

[00:00:54]Uh in fact, scientists, I think it was yesterday or the day before, announced results International scientists announced results that, you know, these people that are infected in South Africa, that virus looks very similar to those viruses taken in the 1990s and 2018. And so this isn't changing in a way that would also really increase my red flags. And so containment is possible. We will you know, and this remains a low risk.