TOPEKA — Three Kansans who came into close “high risk” contact with a person who has confirmed Andes hantavirus are being monitored by state and federal officials.
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment said in a Tuesday news release that three individuals, who won’t be identified because of privacy concerns, are being monitored by KDHE, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and a local health department.
The three were not on the cruise ship MV Hondius, where Andes hantavirus has been confirmed in at least 11 people and caused three deaths, and they do not currently have symptoms, the release said.
“The exposure occurred internationally after contact with an individual from the MV Hondius cruise ship who later tested positive for Andes hantavirus,” the release said.
THE ANDES hantavirus is acquired from a small rat, which leaves the virus in its droppings or feces, said Steven Simpson, a University of Kansas Health System physician who worked on-site in 1996 in Argentina at one of the first hantavirus outbreaks in humans outside the United States.
When those droppings dry out, the virus can attach itself to pieces of dust and infect people when the dust is inhaled, Simpson said.
“A colleague of mine and I were called to Argentina because we were considered the world experts — me, clinical care, and him, pathology and virology of the virus — because they thought they were seeing human to human transmission potentially,” Simpson said.
At the time, Simpson said, he and his colleague tracked the outbreak and, because hospital conditions weren’t ideal — some healthcare workers didn’t have access to gloves, for instance — they determined there wasn’t human to human transmission. That was disproven over the next few years as more research was done, he said.
TODAY, researchers know the Andes strain of hantavirus passes from human to human in rare circumstances, always involving close proximity to someone who has been infected, Simpson said.
However, he echoes the CDC and KDHE in saying the public health threat is extremely small.
“There is a minuscule, low chance of anything happening from this whatsoever, because KDHE is taking the appropriate steps,” Simpson said. “They’ve identified the right people, they are asking them to do the right things, and they are watching them to see whether they even get any symptoms.”
KDHE didn’t respond to a Kansas Reflector inquiry about whether the individuals are being quarantined.
Simpson hopes the attention being paid to hantavirus will make people aware of the cases typically seen in the United States — 890 cases nationwide in 2023, with 20 of those in Kansas — that are acquired from activities like cleaning out barns and stirring up rat or mouse feces.
“We have hantavirus, and especially in western Kansas you can acquire it,” he said. “Because there was an El Nino phenomenon last fall and winter, there’s the possibility that there may be more mice around of our variety, the deer mouse.”
Simpson said people should be careful about stirring up dust as they clean areas where there may be mouse droppings. The hantavirus they could get from those activities in Kansas is more of a threat than the Andes virus, he said.
Andes hantavirus symptoms
