Experts seek to allay fears that the death of a person in China due to Hantavirus is associated with a new infection that could cause the next pandemic.
Unidentified man from the province of Yunnan died during the trip to work on a bus in Shandong province. The cause of death was a rare — and potentially fatal — virus. The news quickly spread online and caused mass anxiety: people began to fear that the pandemic coronavirus to join another fatal virus.
However, scientists decided to dispel the panic. Hantavirus is not new and only in rare cases is passed from person to person, unlike COVID-19, reports the New York Post.
According to the Centers for control and prevention of diseases (CDC), cases of infection with Hantavirus is extremely rare, and are spread through close contact with excreta of rodents, their urine and saliva. In the United States only certain species of rodents can transmit the virus, and only in the case when the person inhales the infected air.
«Hantaviruses that cause disease in humans in the United States, may not be transferred from one person to another.» — CDC writes on its official web site.
Only in some rare cases in Argentina and Chile there was a transfer of the virus from person to person during close contact of a healthy person with a patient infected with a type of Hantavirus, named Andes Virus.
In the US, this virus can cause a potentially fatal respiratory disease, called Hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome. Its symptoms include fatigue, fever, muscle pain, headache, dizziness, vomiting and problems with digestion. In the later stages of the disease, the lungs can fill with fluid — in this case, the patient complicated breath, cough, and shortness of breath.
According to the CDC, from 1993 to 2017, the US has reported a total of 728 confirmed cases of Hantavirus, most of which were not fatal.
