Cruises are so closely associated with illness that the highly contagious norovirus is commonly called the “cruise ship virus.” But a ship headed for Spain’s Canary Islands has attracted global attention due to a rare outbreak of hantavirus that’s left three dead. While alarming, health officials and infectious disease experts say the risk to the general public right now is low because hantavirus is less contagious than other respiratory diseases like the coronavirus responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic. “This is not Covid, this is not influenza. It spreads very, very differently,” Maria Van Kerkhove, director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention at the World Health Organization, said at a press conference on Thursday. During the briefing, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus confirmed eight hantavirus cases among passengers of the MV Hondius luxury cruise ship, including the three who died. Typically transmitted by rodents, hantavirus can cause severe disease in humans. People usually get sick by inhaling air that’s contaminated with droppings, urine, or saliva from infected rodents. But the particular strain identified in the cruise ship cases, called the Andes virus, can spread between people. Health officials in several countries are working to trace the contacts of 29 people who disembarked the ship on the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena on April 24, about two weeks after the first hantavirus death occurred. A Swiss man who left the ship early has tested positive for the virus and is being treated, and two people in the UK are reportedly self-isolating after returning home. Six people from the US were among those who got off the ship. “The Administration is closely monitoring the situation with U.S. travelers onboard the M/V Hondius cruise ship with confirmed hantavirus,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement on Wednesday. Yet experts say there’s no need to panic at this point. “It doesn