00:04Hello and welcome to Euronews' fact-checking show The Cube.
00:07From conspiracy theories linking Israel to the hantavirus outbreak,
00:11to claims that it was orchestrated by big pharma groups to profit from vaccines,
00:16false claims about the virus are rampant online.
00:19The hantavirus outbreak occurred aboard the MV Hondias ship,
00:22which set sail from Argentina on the 1st of April,
00:25before eventually docking on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands on the 10th of May.
00:31Multiple infected passengers have died following contamination,
00:34which typically occurs when humans come into contact with rodent droppings, urine or saliva.
00:39Infections can then be transmitted through human contact.
00:42As with the COVID-19 pandemic, online users have been sharing false claims,
00:47including that the word hantar means scam or fake in Hebrew.
00:50They have used this as purported evidence to support conspiracy theories,
00:54which accuse Israel of orchestrating the outbreak.
00:57In reality, the term they are referring to is haqta, not hantar, a word derived from Arabic.
01:02The virus's name actually stems from South Korea's Hantan River,
01:06a hotspot for an outbreak of the virus in the 1970s.
01:10Elsewhere, online users have spread false claims alleging that the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin
01:15can be used to treat hantavirus.
01:17Now, ivermectin was touted during the pandemic as a cure for COVID-19,
01:21but its use as a cure for hantavirus and coronavirus is not supported by scientific evidence,
01:27as experts we spoke to confirmed.
01:29Separately, online users are saying that it's suspicious that in 2024,
01:34US pharmaceutical company Moderna was developing a vaccine to treat hantaviruses,
01:38bearing in mind that the company also developed one to treat COVID.
01:41They have framed this as evidence that the company played a part in calculating the current outbreak.
01:47It is normal for companies like Moderna to work on vaccines for pathogens like hantavirus,
01:52which have been around for decades.
Commentaires