Editorial · WHO doctrine · CC-BY-4.0

Why Hantacase?

6 trackers launched in two weeks to follow the MV Hondius outbreak. Most show 35–50 cases. We show 9 confirmed cases. Both are right — but they answer different questions. Here is what Hantacase optimises for, and who it is for.

Short version. Hantacase counts only what the World Health Organization has officially confirmed in a published Disease Outbreak News. Everything else — peer-reviewed publications, national health authority bulletins, press reports — goes into a separate "suspected" or "contact" tier. We do not aggregate signals as if they were cases.

The problem

Hantavirus tracking online has become a noisy market in two weeks. hantavirusmap.com mixes mentions and signals. hantavirus.live shows real-time ship position with hourly updates. EpiTrace on Railway shows 35 cases. hantaviruslivemap.com publishes a 2025–2026 ANDV dataset of confirmed and suspected cases.

Each tracker uses a different definition of "case". A journalist citing one of them risks publishing a number that contradicts the WHO, the CDC, the ECDC, or the national health authority of any of the seven affected countries. That risk grows with every news cycle.

The WHO-only doctrine

Hantacase publishes a confirmed count only when a case is linked, by article, to an official WHO Disease Outbreak News bulletin. That count was 6 on 8 May 2026 (DON 2026-DON600) and is 9 as of 2026-05-13. Each confirmed case in the database has a publishable source link and a national health authority footprint (RIVM, RKI, BAG, NICD, Santé Publique France, UKHSA, CDC).

This doctrine is conservative on purpose. The trade-off is real: Hantacase displays smaller numbers than competitors. But every number can be defended in front of a press desk, a public health agency, or a peer reviewer.

What Hantacase shows that others do not

Feature	Hantacase	Typical tracker
WHO-only confirmed status	Yes — strict	Mixed signals
Per-country case breakdown	9 cases / 7 countries (ventilated)	Total only
Contact tracing (linked_case_id)	39 contacts traced	No
Open data (CSV + JSON, CC-BY-4.0)	/data/	Not published
Tier-1 national sources	13 active (WHO, ECDC, CDC, RIVM, RKI, BAG, NICD, SPF, UKHSA)	Press feeds only
MV Hondius cluster page (timeline + route + network graph)	/cluster/mv-hondius/	Limited
Country comparison side-by-side	In-app Compare	No
Strain × country heatmap (WHO + endemic toggle)	Yes	No
Embed widget for journalists	/embed/	No
8 languages with localised slugs (SEO)	EN, FR, ES, DE, IT, PT, NL, RU	EN only

Who is Hantacase for?

Journalists who need a citable, defensible number for an article on deadline.
Researchers who want a clean, sourced CC-BY-4.0 dataset and a public audit trail of outbreak events.
Public health officers tracking what their counterparts have officially announced.
Readers who want context (incubation period, transmission, recommendations by country) and not just a counter.

What Hantacase is not

Not a real-time press aggregator (we show articles in the news tab, but they don't drive the confirmed count).
Not a predictive model. We do not extrapolate, simulate, or model future cases.
Not a substitute for medical advice. If you are exposed and symptomatic, contact your national health authority.

Open source intelligence, accountable

Hantacase is built on open data. The dataset is CC-BY-4.0 and downloadable as CSV or JSON. The full source list, doctrine, and methodology is on the methodology page. Every confirmed case can be traced back to a public article from a tier-1 source.

Open the live map →