Wendy Zuckerman

So here's where we're at right now.

We know that this virus has the potential to spread from person to person.

And now the question is, how quickly can it spread?

Could this lead to the next pandemic?

And to find out more, we called out Professor Anne Sheehy, a virologist and immunologist at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts.

She's a friend of the show.

We've had her on before.

And Anne told us that when she heard about this Hunter virus outbreak.

I don't want my virologist saying, oh, no.

But don't worry, because by the end of this episode, you'll be thinking, oh, yes, because you'll know more science.

And that's always great.

Okay, so as we mentioned, this version of hunter virus that's roaming around the cruise ship is the only one we know that can transmit from person to person, which makes it different to the one that we heard about from the doctor, Michelle, which was called Synombre.

So Anne told us that to understand what makes the Anders version capable of spreading, we can compare the two.

One difference is in a protein that sits on the outside of the virus and helps it to break into cells in our body.

If you think about the cells in your body like a house with a tiny little door, GP is the key that allows Hantavirus to open that door, break into our cells, and infect us.

One study found that the Andes virus also seems to replicate faster in, say, heart tissue compared to other versions of Hunter virus.

So potentially, when you get infected with this Andes version, there's just more viral bits in your body and you have a higher viral load, which could then increase the chance that you go on to infect someone else.

And we have examples from other outbreaks that illustrate how this can all play out.

So in Argentina, back in 2018 to 2019, we saw one of the biggest Andes virus outbreaks ever recorded.

Scientists think that it started when one person got exposed to the virus the usual way, from a rodent, and then... So went to a birthday party, was feeling symptomatic, but...