- A man who died on a bus in China tested positive for the rodent-borne hantavirus.
- The hantavirus disease is highly fatal. Luckily, it almost never spreads from human to human.
Authorities tested the bus’ other passengers, prompting fears of another coronavirus-like global pandemic.
The coronavirus outbreak may have only just begun, but already the world has begun freaking out about another deadly virus. This is the hantavirus, which yesterday killed a Chinese man who was traveling on a bus to Shandong .
Carried by rodents, the hantavirus can cause severe respiratory disease, much like the coronavirus. But the CDC puts the mortality rate of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome – the disease caused by North American strains of the virus – as high as (%) .
Man from China’s Yunnan Province Dies of Hantavirus
This is much higher than the coronavirus’s mortality rate, which the WHO estimates at 3.4% . And because Chinese officials have tested the other 48 People on the bus for the hantavirus, people are now starting to panic that China may have kickstarted another global pandemic.
Predictably enough, the combination of death with the possibility of contagion has sent the internet into a frenzy. Because if the coronavirus weren’t already destructive enough, Global Pandemic Twitter fears that another deadly virus is about to begin spreading.
Equally predictably, people are blaming China for another virus outbreak. Some are going so far as to repeat the claim that the coronavirus – and now the hantavirus – are the result of lab experiments.
The coronavirus has infected nearly 480, people worldwide and killed over , . Western nations like the U.S. and the U.K. are only just beginning to experience the worst impacts of the COVID – pandemic . So a new virus couldn’t have possibly chosen the worst time to arrive. And given that the (CDC identifies extremely high fatality rates for diseases caused by both “New World” and “Old World” hantaviruses , the reemergence of the virus could potentially be even more catastrophic than that of the coronavirus. Who knows what kind of devastation that terrifying duo could wreak on the global economy . But the thing is, the hantavirus isn’t likely to cause massive economic disruption. It isn’t likely to cause another pandemic, or even an epidemic localized entirely to China. Why You Don’t Need to Worry About Hantavirus Why? via aerosolized virus that is shed in urine, feces, and saliva, and less frequently by a bite from an infected host. Put simply, you ‘ d have to come into contact with an infected rodent. And if you are unfortunate enough to be infected, you probably wouldn’t be able to pass on the virus by touching another person (according to Mayo Clinic, some South American strains of hantavirus have shown “evidence” Unsurprisingly, some pathologically cynical and paranoid individuals are denying this piece of well-established virological fact.
True, Chinese authorities and the WHO initially claimed that people weren’t infecting each other with the coronavirus. But previous hantavirus outbreaks reveal that transmission is almost always very low.
Since January , there have only been (cases of hantavirus disease in the US
If hantavirus really were primarily spread by human-to-human transmission, those figures would be much, much higher . But they’re not. They’re very low. And
So no, you
probably don’t need to worry about hantavirus . Save your hand-wringing for the coronavirus, which is highly contagious and potentially fatal. But don’t add the hantavirus to your list of anxieties. Because goodness knows we already have more than enough as it is.
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