Michigan Reports Its First Human Hantavirus Case

Michigan has confirmed its first case of hantavirus, a possibly dangerous respiratory disease spread through contact with infected rodents.

Michigan health officials announced on Monday that a woman from Washtenaw County was recently hospitalised with a serious pulmonary illness from Sin Nombre hantavirus, which she was likely exposed to when cleaning an empty dwelling that contained signs of an ongoing rodent infection.

According to the Centres for Disease Control, as of January 2017, there have only been 728 reported incidents of the hantavirus in the United States since health officials started monitoring it in 1993.

New Mexico recorded the most cases, with 109, followed by Colorado, with 104, Arizona, with 78, California, with 61, and Texas, with 45, and a newspaper outlet has reached out to the Department of Health for more information on the patient’s condition.

Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome is typically transferred to humans when they inhale air tainted with the virus through rodent droppings, from a rodent bite or if people touch something that’s been contaminated with rodent urine, saliva or droppings before touching their skin, mouth or nose.

According to the Centres for Disease Control, it may also be possible to get the virus by eating food contaminated by infected rodents’ droppings, urine or saliva, and Dr Joneigh Khaldun, chief medical executive and chief deputy for health at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services said that anyone who comes into contact with rodents that carry hantavirus is at risk for HPS.

The most common hantavirus in the United States is the Sin Nombre hantavirus, which the Michigan woman was confirmed to have.

It’s spread through deer and white-footed mice, and can’t be transferred from person to person and has a 38 per cent fatality rate.

Symptoms of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome may happen one to eight weeks after exposure and include lethargy, temperature and muscle pains as well as headaches, dizziness, chills, nausea and abdominal discomfort.

Later manifestations include coughing and shortness of breath.

Several of those symptoms mimic those for COVID 19, and Khaldun said healthcare providers with a suspected case of hantavirus should contact their local health department to report it and consider options for testing.

It’s responsive to most disinfectants and typically lasts less than a week in indoor settings and only a few hours in outside environments exposed to sunlight.

Dr Juan Luis Marquez, medical director with the Washtenaw County Health Department said that they can prevent and decrease the risk of hantavirus infection by taking precautions and being alert to the possibility of it.

And a significant outbreak in rodents could be an issue, but hopefully, it’s an isolated incident, but then again, we know how many times the scientists and psy-ops brigade have backtracked and U turned lately, so anything is possible if they want it to be.

And anyone, generally speaking, cleaning an abandoned or condemned property should wear hazmat equipment, and they must certainly wear respirators.

But this is one virus after another, and it’s not going to end until all of humanity has been vaccinated to decrease the lives of people, but of course, we all know that with rodents comes disease, but here we go again with the daily scaremongering.

Hantavirus is common in the US, especially in the mountains and National Parks of California like Yosemite, and this is not super rare.

Of course, the sky is falling again because of a mouse. What we should really be doing is living our lives, and not worrying about things like this.

You can die at any moment from things that you do in your everyday life, driving a car, a random staph infection from a small cut, lightning strike, bigfoot attack, it goes on and on, and life is way too short to be wasting our time agonising about a mouse in Michigan!