TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - A number of posts on Instagram [archive] and Facebook surfacing since the second week of May 2026 claim that the Hantavirus is the byproduct of a conspiracy and an intelligence agenda. The uploaders even equate the emergence of this virus with the Covid-19 pandemic.
The social media posts include several posters with the narrative that the Hantavirus is a global agenda, engineered and exaggerated by the media, with the ultimate goal of commercializing a vaccine.
However, is the Hantavirus really a conspiracy?
FACT CHECK
Tempo interviewed epidemiologists and reviewed credible medical archives. The findings show that there is no valid scientific evidence to support the claim that the Hantavirus is a conspiracy, a laboratory-engineered product, or a tool designed for vaccine commercialization.
The recent outbreak of the Andes strain of Hantavirus, which infected passengers on the cruise ship MV Hondius in late April 2026 and killed three people, proves that this disease is real. Hantaviruses are a group of naturally occurring viruses originating from wild rodents that can cause severe infections and even death in humans.
Of the approximately 22 strains identified so far, the Andes strain, which spread aboard the MV Hondius, is the only variant proven to be transmissible between humans.
Medical history records show that Hantaviruses are not new pathogens that suddenly emerged in 2026. This virus was first identified back in the 1950s when it triggered an outbreak of Hemorrhagic Fever with Renal Syndrome (HFRS) during the Korean War (1951-1953), infecting more than 3,000 UN troops. The virus resurfaced in the western United States in 1993, causing an outbreak of Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS) that infected at least 53 people across 14 states.
National Institutes of Health (NIH) data, as reported by the BBC, estimates that there are roughly 150,000 cases of HFRS globally each year, predominantly in Europe and Asia, with the highest concentration found in China. Meanwhile, in the United States, health authorities recorded 890 cases of infection between 1993 and 2023.
Similarly, Covid-19 is triggered by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which Worldometer data shows has infected more than 704 million people and claimed over 7 million lives worldwide. The massive spread of these two viruses is driven purely by biological factors and ecological interactions, rather than any elitist conspiracy scenario.
Hantavirus Pandemic Potential Is Low
Epidemiologist Dicky Budiman from Australia's Griffith University assesses that Hantavirus has a very low potential to trigger a global pandemic on the scale of Covid-19. Transmission to humans generally occurs only through the inhalation of airborne particles from the urine, saliva, or feces of infected rodents.
This transmission mechanism is vastly different from SARS-CoV-2, which spreads rapidly through airborne droplets and is frequently transmitted by asymptomatic carriers. Furthermore, out of the dozens of existing Hantavirus strains, only the Andes strain has been shown to pass from person to person.
"Covid-19 meets almost all the requirements to become a pandemic. Hantavirus, however, does not," Dicky told Tempo on Monday, May 25, 2026.
To date, no Hantavirus vaccine has been manufactured for global mass distribution, unlike the rollout seen with the Covid-19 vaccine. Its current usage remains limited to South Korea. Consequently, the primary strategy to combat this virus continues to rely on controlling rodent populations, maintaining environmental hygiene, early detection, and intensive hospital care.
CONCLUSION
Based on these findings, Tempo concluded that the narrative framing the Hantavirus as the result of a conspiracy is completely false.
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