The cruise ship MV Hondius has become a new global public health case. Hantavirus, until recently treated as a local rarity in Argentina and Chile, is now travelling the world - an American passenger positive (asymptomatic), a Frenchman with symptoms in isolation, a Greek placed in quarantine in Athens. Mass evacuation from Tenerife to national capitals.

Six people tested positive, three deaths since the outbreak began, including one on board. Patient zero - Leo Schilperoord, a 70-year-old Dutch ornithologist, likely contracted the virus in the Ushuaia region, Argentina, before boarding. Because that's where - at the southern tip of South America - the long-tailed rice rat lives, the natural host of the Andean strain.

This strain has a mortality rate of around 40 percent. That rate exceeds every pandemic variant of COVID. But this needs to be added straight away: it doesn't spread easily. That's why WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus repeated: „This is not a second COVID. The risk to the public is low." Translation: no panic. But control is needed.

How does the virus work? Mainly via contact with feces, urine or saliva of infected rodents - when humans inhale particles in enclosed spaces. Incubation lasts from one to eight weeks. Symptoms include fever, muscle pain, followed by cardiopulmonary syndrome. Over 10,000-100,000 cases a year worldwide, mostly in Asia and Europe. The Andean strain is different - it attacks the lungs, and unlike other hantaviruses - it can also spread human to human.

That's why Greece isn't easing measures. Minister Adonis Georgiadis repeated that there is „absolutely no fear of spread" - a standard line for panic management. But at the same time Athens is counting on serious screening of all passengers from the ship. No panic. No relaxation. In between - that thin path of public health the Balkans never quite learned, not even with COVID.

For Macedonia this isn't a test. Not yet. But the question is whether we have the capacity if a hantavirus patient lands at Skopje Airport after a tourist cruise. Do we have isolation rooms? Do we have tests? Do we have a protocol? These are questions to send to the health ministry before it's too late, not after.