GENEVA - The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday that the deadly hantavirus outbreak on the cruise ship MV Hondius in the Atlantic did not mark the beginning of a COVID-like pandemic.

"This is not the start of a pandemic," said Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's chief of Epidemic and Pandemic Preparedness and Prevention. She stressed at a press conference in Geneva: "This is not COVID."

"This is not the same situation we were in six years ago. It doesn't spread the same way coronavirus does. It's very different," she said.

"Most hantavirus don't transmit between people at all," as it is mainly transmitted to people from rodents, through their feces, saliva, or droppings, she noted.