About the Illness

Tips for Preventing Hantavirus

More Rodents-More Risk

It looks like that disease called hantavirus is turning up once again in Utah. It has people at the health department so worried, they are putting out public service announcements to warn people. News Specialist Pamela Davis has more on where two new cases of hantavirus have shown up.

The first case was in Juab County. That one was reported in June. The second was in Emery County, reported in July. Both victims were middle-aged men who had been working outside -- and somehow got exposed to droppings from the mice that carry hantavirus.

The Public Service Announcements call hantavirus a serious respiratory disease, and one of the deadliest diseases in the U.S. It's a warning from the Utah Health Department.

It seemed like Hantavirus had gone away for a few years. Now it's back. There have been TWO reported cases of hantavirus in Utah in the last two months.

Dr. Wyatt Frampton, of the Utah Department of Health explains, "We've had cases recently. we haven't had a case up until these two since October of '96."

Hantavirus can kill you. And doctors have very few ways to treat it.

A hantavirus survivor says, "The doctor told my family that I wouldn't make it through the night, that I had proably 2 to 3 hours to live."

That's why disease specialists like Dr. Wyatt Frampton are worried, and trying to act quickly - now that two hantavirus cases have been diagnosed.

One man got hantavirus after trying to get some mice out of his pipes. "Mice and droppings and nests came out and kind of hit him right in the face," Dr. Frampton says. "Pretty remarkable exposure."

There's a second reason health workers want to raise awareness about hantavirus. "We're getting reports from people that they're seeing mice. More mice than they've seen in recent history," Frampton told us.

More mice means more sources of hantavirus -- and more risk for people who work or play outdoors.

You can get hantavirus from touching or breathing in dust from mice droppings. That means you should be very careful when cleaning out your garage, moving stacked wood, and sweeping up mice droppings.