Covid-style misinformation continues to swirl online around a deadly outbreak of the rare hantavirus aboard an Atlantic cruise ship, including false claims the name of the rodent-borne disease was derived from the Hebrew word for "nonsense". Experts told AFP no such word exists in the Hebrew language. Hantavirus was named after the Hantan River in South Korea, where the first major outbreak was recorded in the 1950s.
"We do not need to be afraid of the virus, since 'hanta' in Hebrew means nonsense," says Dharma Pongrekun, a former candidate for governor of Indonesia's capital Jakarta, in an interview posted on YouTube on May 15, 2026.
The video, which has racked up more than 200,000 views, also shows Dharma describing hantavirus as "a global agenda" to sell vaccines -- echoing language he used in an earlier political event where he falsely suggested Covid-19 was a made-up pandemic.
Covid-era conspiracies resurged on social media following the global scare sparked by a hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius cruise ship from Argentina to Cape Verde (archived here and here).
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a total of 13 cases, including three deaths, have been reported as of May 27 (archived link).
Eight infections were confirmed for Andes virus -- the only strain transmitted between humans through close and prolonged contact, and which is predominantly found in parts of South America (archived link).
All known cases in the outbreak were people on board the...
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