Many Covid-era conspiracy theories have been revived since the outbreak of hantavirus on a cruise ship, likely amplified due to the anti-vaxx movement and fears about a new global pandemic.
As with the coronavirus, theorists allege hantavirus is a planned pandemic – or "plandemic" – created by Big Pharma and vaccine manufacturers; a "biological weapon" created in a laboratory to push vaccines onto the masses.
Known conspiracy theorists Alex Jones and Marjorie Taylor Greene (who was notorious for sharing false narratives during the Covid-19 pandemic) amplified these claims on their platforms, with Greene also sharing fake news that anti-parasitic drug Ivermectin could be used to cure hantavirus as it "blocks RNA viruses from entering the nucleus, preventing replication".
In reality, there's no research that Ivermectin could be used as a treatment, and hantavirus replicates in the cytoplasm, not the nucleus, rendering Ivermectin useless against its replication.
Global public health guidance also does not predict that a pandemic due to the hantavirus is likely. As Maria Van Kerkhove, Director of Epidemic and Pandemic Management at the World Health Organization recently said at a briefing: "This is not Covid, this is not the start of a Covid pandemic. This is not the same situation we were in six years ago. It doesn't spread the same way."
Internet users also falsely claimed that hantavirus is a "planned side effect" of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, sharing a Pfizer document that references "hantavirus pulmonary infection" as part of a list of adverse events of special interest. This document in fact lists health conditions that scientists monitor during vaccine trials, not side effects.
Vedika Bahl fact-checks the viral conspiracy theories in Truth or Fake.