Health watch | The Hantavirus scare: Beware of the rodents

What began as a mysterious illness aboard an Antarctic luxury cruise has now turned into one of the world’s most closely watched infectious disease scares. The hantavirus outbreak, which left several passengers critically ill and caused multiple deaths, has drawn attention not only because the virus is rare, but because the Andes strain involved is one of the few known to show limited human-to-human transmission. Scientists and public-health agencies nevertheless stress that this is not a Covid-scale threat. The overall risk remains low.

Hantavirus is primarily spread through contact with infected rodent urine, saliva or droppings. Early symptoms can look deceptively ordinary—fever, bodyache, fatigue, headache and nausea—before some patients rapidly develop severe breathing difficulty and fluid build-up in the lungs, a condition known as Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS), which can be fatal. Health experts advise basic but important precautions: avoiding direct contact with rodent waste, ventilating closed rooms before cleaning them, using disinfectants instead of dry sweeping, and improving sanitation in storage and residential areas.

India has never seen a major hantavirus outbreak of its own, but the virus is not entirely unfamiliar either. Sporadic cases and evidence of exposure have been documented over the years, particularly among people working in possible rodent-infested places, such as warehouses or agri hubs. Indian authorities have already stepped up monitoring through ICMR labs after two Indian crew members aboard the affected ship tested positive. Both are asymptomatic, as of now.