Wendy Zuckerman

And this is the first time a lot of us have even heard of this virus.

So we're going to break down exactly what it is, starting with what happens if you get infected.

Because on the cruise ship, the three passengers died within just a few days of their symptoms starting, which is very scary.

So we wanted to know how things can escalate so quickly.

And for this, we called out Professor Michelle Harkins.

And she's treated dozens of Hantavirus patients in the ICU.

And she told us that there are a couple of dozen different types of hunter viruses that can infect humans.

The one that Michelle generally sees in New Mexico is called the Sinombre virus.

And it is a lot like the version that popped up on the cruise ship.

Yeah, they're in the same family.

We can call them relatives.

So if you get infected with hantavirus and you have all these viral particles in your body, they tend to attack and go after this specific type of cell.

What happens from here is that your body starts to mount an immune response to get rid of this invader.

And that's often when you can start to get sick in a way that Michelle says might feel pretty familiar at first.

And it's possible that more of us have been infected with Hantavirus than we think.

Studies have measured the blood of thousands of people for Hantavirus antibodies, evidence that Hantavirus had weaseled its way into their body and then their immune system responded.

And they found that in the Americas, just over 2% of people that they looked at had Hunter virus antibodies.

A lot of those folks were probably never diagnosed with Hunter virus and might have had pretty mild symptoms.

But for others who get infected, like some of the passengers on the cruise ship, it can get very nasty.

In the first week of symptoms, you can start getting GI problems.