AGENCIES, Beijing: While the world is battling pandemic coronavirus, China has reported that the virus is on the decline and Wuhan (the city of the coronavirus origin) is limping back to normal. But the virus danger is not over yet for China as a man from Yunnan province was tested positive to the new virus named Hantavirus and died hours after that.
According to a report in China’s Global Times, the man was on his way back to Shandong Province for work on a chartered bus when he passed away. The more shocking update is that 32 other people have been tested for the same and are awaiting their test results.
What is Hantavirus? According to the website of Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Hantaviruses are a family of viruses spread mainly by rodents and can cause varied disease syndromes in people worldwide. Each hantavirus serotype has a specific rodent host species and is spread to people via aerosolized virus that is shed in urine, feces, and saliva, and less frequently by a bite from an infected host. It is spread by the deer mouse.”
While the relief remains that this is not a kind of disease that spreads from human to human, but a person can get infected if they have touched their eyes, nose or mouth after touching rodent droppings, urine, or nesting materials, as per a fact sheet of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The symptoms for Hantavirus are similar to Covid-19 which includes fever, headache, abdominal pain among others.There have been sporadic cases in India. In 2008, the Hantavirus struck the Irulas, a group of snake and rat catchers.
In 2016, a 12-year-old in Mumbai had died of the hantavirus infections.
