Hantavirus found in deer mice

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Hantavirus found in deer mice

Deadly disease can be contracted by inhaling dust

By Cheryl

UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

July 8, 2001

Deer mice infected with hantavirus, which has killed 106 people in the

United States since 1993 and made an additional 175 sick, have been found in

San Diego County for the third straight year.

Officials with the county Department of Environmental Health said no humans

are known to have contracted the virus here. But they emphasized that the

potential exists because deer mice carrying the virus have been found in

some urban and rural areas from San Onofre to Otay Mesa.

So far this year, infected deer mice have been trapped near Lake Hodges, by

Qualcomm Stadium, in Elfin Forest, Poway, Otay Mesa and the Black Mountain

area, and in Carlsbad, Hidden Valley, the Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve and

Ranchita.

Marilyn Corodemas, the county's chief of community health, said residents

should not be overconfident if infected deer mice have not been found near

them.

" We assume that hantavirus is in the rodent population every year, " she

said. " But we do random sampling, and we may not pick up those particular

rodents that are infected. "

Devine, the county's supervising vector ecologist, said three of the

261 deer mice trapped and tested so far this year harbored the virus, as did

11 of the 437 rodents tested last year and 10 of the 160 tested in 1999.

None of the 14 mice trapped in 1998 and 1997 were found to have the virus,

but six of the 92 tested in 1996 did.

Since 1993, 12 of the 33 people in California who breathed hantavirus have

died. Nationally, 281 human cases have been reported, including 106 deaths,

since 1993.

Humans can ingest the virus by breathing airborne dust particles of dried

feces or urine of infected mice. Corodemas said deer mice are not like

normal field or house mice, which are not afraid of human environments.

Instead, they are shy but like to cluster in protected areas where they can

find food.

Corodemas cautioned people to guard against breathing infected dust and to

avoid camping near rodent burrows.

Health officials advise people who enter cabins or garages where there are

rodent droppings to wet those areas with a solution of bleach and water to

keep down dust. Wear gloves and dispose of the debris in a trash can.

In 1993, Jeanne Messier, a 27-year-old biology researcher from UCSD, died

after contracting hantavirus while studying birds in an ecological reserve

near Mammoth Lakes.

She developed many of the symptoms of hantavirus disease, such as fever,

chills, myalgia, cough and instability, and, ultimately, lung failure. That

same year, dozens of people died because of hantavirus infection in the Four

Corners area of the Southwest.