New Delhi, May 8 -- It seems like the script of a horror film. Three confirmed cases of hantavirus and five suspected ones among 150 people aboard a cruise ship that left Argentina last month have sent global health authorities into a tizzy.

Three of the eight are dead, as reported, and efforts are on to identify possible carriers among other passengers and those with whom the infected may have come in contact before showing symptoms.

Distant as all this seems, the covid nightmare was enough to ensure nobody takes such outbreaks lightly. After all, we were warned that climate change would make deadly pandemics likelier as tiny bugs would find it easier to hop from one species to another.

As of now, information on the hantavirus is patc...