Confirmed and suspected cases of hantavirus infection have struck eight people on a cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean, and now, laboratory tests have pointed to a specific kind of hantavirus at fault. Hantaviruses are a large family of viruses carried by rodents, such as rats. It's relatively uncommon for them to cause infections in people, but when they do, they can be deadly — depending on the type of hantavirus at hand, fatality rates range between 1% and 50% . There is no specific treatment to cure hantavirus infections, but prompt medical care to manage symptoms can improve patients' chance of survival. Upon learning about the cluster of illnesses associated with the cruise ship and identifying hantaviruses as a possible culprit, health authorities, including the World Health Organization (WHO), already suspected that the Andes virus might be to blame .…