Jim Reid

People had never been exposed to it before, had the chance to build up any sort of immunity.

And that's as we know now, it can spread very easily worldwide.

between people, person to person.

You remember that, that R number we talked about all the time, the rate of transmission between people.

Hantavirus is very different.

It's a family of viruses rather than one disease.

And crucially, it's not new.

You know, it was first isolated, I think, back in 1989, a team from South Korea looking at field mice.

That's why it's named after the Hanta River in South Korea.

It does not spread very easily.

You normally have to be, as I say, in extremely close contact with another infected person, which is why the message from the WHO this morning is that the risk to the wider public is still much lower than it was back in those days of COVID and coronavirus.

That's right.

This is a flight that someone who sadly died, later died of the virus, apparently took on April the 25th.

They're going to be doing all this work to contact other potential people who might have been infected.

One of the issues here is that the incubation period for this form of the illness is really unclear how long it is.

Sometimes it develops between two and four weeks.

It can develop in a matter of days, though, as little as four days.

And that makes it quite difficult for patients.

the health authorities when they're trying to track exactly who else may have been infected in this suspected outbreak.

And explain to people why it matters.