Hantavirus Rumours Emerge, Claiming Origin in Israel: Is This True?

Hantavirus Rumours Emerge, Claiming Origin in Israel: Is This True?

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia - The hantavirus has once again come under scrutiny after reports emerged of three passenger deaths and several positive cases on the MV Hondius cruise ship due to infection with the rare virus. The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned of the potential for an increase in cases, especially if public health controls are not strictly enforced.

Amidst the growing awareness of this rare virus, information has surfaced claiming that the hantavirus was first discovered in Israel. Is this true?

According to Euro News, the issue began when a number of social media users asked Grok (the AI chatbot owned by X) to explain the meaning of the word “hanta” in Hebrew (the official language of Israel). In some cases, posts asking “Hey @grok, what does ‘Hanta’ mean in Hebrew?” have been viewed by millions of people.

Grok initially responded that “hanta” means “deception, fraud, nonsense, lies, or something false” in Hebrew, but the bot then corrected its answer, stating that the word the social media users were referring to was actually “khartah” (or chartah, חרטה).

This term, which is used as slang in Hebrew, originally comes from Arabic.

Publications claiming that the word for “false” in Hebrew is similar to “hanta” have been misused to support conspiracy theories blaming Israel for the hantavirus outbreak.

In conclusion, the name hantavirus has no connection to Israel.

Instead, researchers say the term comes from a disease that first developed among UN troops during the Korean War in the 1950s, which was called “Korean hemorrhagic fever”.

Two decades later, in the 1970s, scientists identified a virus that lived in field mice near a river, which was then known as the “Hantaan virus”. As more related viruses were discovered, these viruses were collectively referred to as “hantaviruses”.

(hsy/hsy)