Hantavirus outbreak tests post-Covid health communications playbook

A rodent-borne virus with a scary name. A mid-ocean cruise ship in quarantine. Several people dead and more falling sick. It is no wonder that an outbreak of the Andes strain of hantavirus on a luxury liner in the Atlantic has revived some Covid-era trauma and panic online. That has presented a dilemma to health officials: how to communicate quickly and clearly about a virus which is not new and unlikely to cause a pandemic, but where knowledge gaps remain — without inadvertently fomenting fear....