NEW YORK (AP) — Hantaviruses do not spread easily between people, which makes health officials confident the recent outbreak on a cruise ship that has killed three people will not turn into an epidemic.But, still, they need to make sure. So health officials in several countries are contact tracing: trying to identify and follow people who may have come in contact with passengers who got sick or died.Hantaviruses usually spread when people inhale contaminated residue of rodent droppings. While human cases are rare, small outbreaks have been documented around the world. But the Andes virus implicated in the cruise ship outbreak may be able to spread between people in rare cases. And viruses can change.AdvertisementAdvertisementScientists are trying to learn more about the virus as fast as they can, including whether it has mutated and how exactly it spreads.What is contact tracing?The goal of contact tracing is to alert people who might have been exposed, keep tabs on them in case they come down with symptoms, and prevent them from spreading it to others.The process isn’t easy because people are social and mobile creatures who spend time with others, visit crowded places and travel.In the cruise ship outbreak, fewer than a dozen people are thought to have shown any symptoms, and there have been only five confirmed cases, but many more may have been exposed.Dozens of potentially exposed passengers have already left the shipAbout 140 people remain on the cruise ship headed for the Canary Islands, where they will disembark, and none has been reported to be sick.AdvertisementAdvertisementBut authorities are trying to reach the dozens of people who left the ship about two weeks after a passenger died, but before authorities knew a hantavirus was the culprit. They were from at least 12 different countries, including from several states in the U.S. — including Arizona, California, Georgia and Texas, according to infectious disease experts and state public health officials.Different countries take different approachesAuthorities in St. Helena — the remote, volcanic British territory in the South Atlantic where passengers got off — said they were monitoring a small number of people considered “higher-risk contacts.” They were being told to isolate for 45 days, the St. Helena government said.British health officials say two people w …
