Many of you might be asking already, what the heck is hantavirus is? Well, HPS is a disease that is a severe, sometimes fatal, respiratory disease that is caused when humans come into contacts with rodents. These rodents carry hantaviruses. Anyone who comes into contact with a rodents that carry hantaviruses have a risk of getting this deadly disease. Hantavirus was first identified in 1993 in areas in the southwest United States and found to be transferred by rodent urine, feces, saliva, and by air-born particles containing these items. The latest hantavirus outbreak at Yosemite National Park was because hantavirus’s transfer to humans by mice. Human-to-human transmission of the hantavirus in America has not yet been documented, therefore (in America) the disease is not contagious.
In just March of 2018, there was a boy named Fernando who got this deadly disease from exposure to rodents and also rodent urine and feces. Fernando reported sharp stomach pains, and a fever. There is a special machine called a ECMO which circulates oxygen through the blood, and that is the machine that is keeping Fernando alive.
Fernando has since been transported to Aoura hospital and has no current status on his condition. In April of 2018 another severe case of hantavirus was reported. A women named Kylee Lane had been given’ the diagnosis the ever so deadly hantavirus. Lane was a mother of one and each time she’d go to visit her daughter, her symptoms were worse and worse. By the time of one of her lasts visits she could barely walk to see her daughter. Currently she is also on a ECMO machine in very critical condition. The very first case of Hantavirus was recorded in 2015. In 2017 the total number of cases in the United States were 728, 36% of these cases have been reported deadly.
Therefore, this makes hantavirus the third deadliest disease in the most recent years.
