Hanta Virus
by: Peyton Tuttle
How You Get Infected
The Hanta Virus is a name of a rare disease that is spread by rodents, the Deer Mouse, Cotton Rat, Rice Rat, and the White-footed Mouse. You can get Hanta Virus from the urine or feces, if you breath in the contaminated air, you can get Hanta Virus.
Transmitting
This disease doesn't spread from person to person. It's only spread by the urine and feces of the rodents.
Organs it affects
The Hanta Virus affects the lungs and the kidney. It affects the lungs because it fills the lungs up with water, making it harder to breath. It affects the kidney by causing kidney failure, or excessive urinating.
Symptoms
The Symptoms for Hanta Virus are flu like symptoms. There are earlier, and not so serious symptoms, and there are more serious symptoms. The earlier symptoms are fever, chills, head ache, muscle aches, vomiting, and diarrhea. The more serious symptoms are shortness of breath, fluid in the lungs, low blood pressure, and reduced heart efficency.
Treatment
There isn't a treatment for Hanta, but you can help with the symptoms. You can get assisted respiration, which is a procedure for manually applying positive pressure to gases surrounding the airway during inhalation to augment or greater in size of gases in the lungs. You can also get extra-corporeal membrane distress which is a special procedure that uses a artificial heart-lung machine to take over the work of the lungs. You can also get support for breathing.
Prevention
To prevent getting rodents, which causes Hanta Virus, you can seal holes in your house so the rodents cant get in. you can keep your house clean because food crumbs and dirt attract mice and rats. You can also set mice traps, so if you do get mice, you can get them out.
Cases in the u.s.
In the us there has been a total of 639 cases in 35 different states. Which were
Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming.
The most cases were in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. They all had above 50 cases.
Fatalness
About 60% of the people in the u.s. have died of Hanta Virus. They died because of respiratory failure.
Similar Diseases
Similar diseases to hanta virus are Lassa Fever, Leptospirosis, Plauge, Tularemia, Salmonelbsis, and Rat-Bite Fever. They are all similar because they are all transmitted by rodents.
The First Out Break
The first outbreak of the Hanta Virus started with a young fit Navajo man who started suffering from shortness of breath, he was rushed to the hospital and died rapidly. A feew days later his fiancee had died showing the same symptoms.
Where It Started
The Hanta Virus has started in the four corners by a drought, then having rain, and snowfall the plants grew quicker. That caused mice and rats that reproduced rapidly.
What is Causing Hanta Virus?
To figure out what rodents were causing Hanta Virus they caught over 1,700 rodetns to test.
More Outbreaks
After the first outbreak there were more cases in the u.s. and other countries including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
Is It Common?
The Hanta Virus isn't very common, if there are any cases they are usually isolated.
Different Hanta Viruses.
The North American version of Hanta Virus can't be spread. In South Africa the disease can be spread from person to person.
Discovered
The Hanta Virus was discovered in May, 1993