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A map shared widely online has been used to falsely claim that the Andes strain of the hantavirus is spreading rapidly across Europe and North America.
The pictures are screenshots of a map from HantavirusMap.com, which have spread on X and TikTok in the aftermath of a hantavirus outbreak on the cruise ship MV Hondius.
Social media users are claiming that the red and orange markers on the map show confirmed hantavirus cases across the world, particularly in Europe and North America.
This is, however, misleading. The screenshots from the website do not show new cases of hantavirus but rather aggregate news articles and community alerts from around the world.
For example, when you hover over Spain, the map shows a red alert with the number 18.
This has been misinterpreted as if there are this number of hantavirus cases in Spain, when in reality there are currently two confirmed cases of hantavirus in Spain linked to the MV Hondius outbreak.
The second case concerned an individual who was in preventive quarantine and had close contact with someone identified as part of the initial outbreak, according to Spain’s Health Ministry, who stressed that the “risk situation” for the general population remains unchanged.
The website itself has a disclaimer saying that the map shows “news signals, not confirmed cases,” before showing a WHO update on the confirmed number of cases.
The site’s creator, Bas Witkop, told The Cube, Euronews’ fact-checking team, that he built the tool to aggregate public reports and official updates, not to track confirmed infections.
He said people had taken screenshots of the map and added voiceovers claiming it showed confirmed infections, in turn, making the situation appear more alarming than in reality.
Witkop has since added clearer disclaimers and stricter classification rules after seeing online users misinterpret the map.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said, in its 26 May update, that 13 cases of the virus had been reported in total, including 11 confirmed cases and 2 probable.
Health authorities said that the identification of additional cases was expected, as the Andes hantavirus has a long incubation period.
The agency added that the risk to the wider EU/EEA population “remains very low.”
Most hantaviruses spread through contact between infected rodents and humans. The Andes variant of the virus can indeed spread between humans, although health agencies say this requires close and prolonged contact with the symptomatic person.
The hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius triggered a wave of online health misinformation.
The WHO has previously warned that misinformation can spread rapidly during health emergencies, creating what it called an “infodemic”, or, an abundance of information that makes it harder for people to find trustworthy guidance on the actual health risks.
Researchers say the outbreak has reignited many of the same online misinformation patterns that spread during the COVID-19 pandemic.