Hi, Benjamin here. It's time once again for the Nature Briefing podcast, the Friday show where we talk about some of the latest science news. We've only got one story this week, and it's about the recent hanta virus outbreak on a cruise ship. We're looking at what phase the outbreak is in and what questions remain for researchers.

Someone who's been writing about this is Nature's Rachel Fieldhouse, who joins me now down the

line from Sydney, Australia. Rachel, how are you doing? I'm good. Thank you so much for having me on.

Not at all. Right. Before we get into the specifics of the outbreak, I think it'd be worth

given folk a quick 101 on hanta viruses. Now this, it has to be said, double and thine,

this is not COVID. So, Rachel, tell me what it is.

Hanter virus essentially is a family of viruses. So there are sort of two main types. You have

like the old world and the new world. And the one that we're seeing at the moment is one of the new world species and it's the Andes virus. That means that when it infects someone, it can go after their lungs, essentially filling them up with fluid. And it's a lot more fatal because of that than the old world,

which grows after your kidneys and can cause longer term problems that are less acute

and meaning that you can receive a bit more care and have a better chance of surviving.

And folk tend to get these viruses by inhaling essentially rodent feces or urine, right?

Maybe they're disturbing it when they're walking through woodland, something like that.

But the Andes species, as you mentioned there, which is central to this, is slightly different in that regard.

Yes, so it can be spread through exposure to, it's essentially dust that contains particles

from rat feces, rat urine, rat saliva, but also the Andes virus is the only species that we

know of that can spread human to human, though that has been rarely documented.

You're right, the number of reported cases of the Andes virus are rare, and yet here we are now with this outbreak.

And this obviously all centres on this Dutch-flagged cruise ship, the NV Hondias, which sets sail from the far south of Argentina towards Antarctica and then across the Atlantic Ocean.

And that's a voyage that began on the 1st of April. What happens

on that voyage? So Argentina has been having an outbreak of Hedge virus for a while, and the current

theory from experts at the WHO and a few other infectious disease bodies, they suspect that one

of the passengers was somehow exposed to the

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