Could the hantavirus spark the next pandemic?

The hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship has precipitated a race against time for researchers to unravel the truth and find out how the disease was spread from one human to another. 

The current outbreak is caused by a “New World” hantavirus from the Andes. Hantavirus was first isolated in South Korea in the late 1970s. The name comes from the Hantan river that flows from north of the border. The less deadly “Old World” strains of the hantavirus, which were accompanied by haemorrhagic fever and renal syndrome, were found in Eurasia and Africa. “New World” hantavirus, discovered later in the 1990s and mostly in the Americas, however, causes severe respiratory disease and has a fatality rate of one in three infected.