Colorado adult dies from hantavirus after local rodent exposure

An adult in Douglas County, Colorado, has died from hantavirus in a case that health officials say is not connected to the recent cruise ship outbreak.

The infection appears to have come from local exposure to rodents, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and local news reports.

A total of 41 people across the United States are under monitoring for hantavirus in connection to the deadly outbreak that killed three passengers on the MV Hondius cruise ship. There are around one to two dozen cases of this rare disease reported in the United States each year. For example, per Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, there were 26 U.S. hantavirus cases in 2023, 13 cases in 2022 and 16 cases in 2021.

The CDC began surveillance of the disease in 1993, after an outbreak in the Four Corners region where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet. From 1993 to the end of 2023, 890 cases of hantavirus disease were reported in the U.S. Of those cases, 121 have been in Colorado and 129 have been in New Mexico, with those states carrying the highest number of cumulative cases.

"Hantavirus infections caused by the Sin Nombre hantavirus occur regularly in Colorado, usually in the spring and summer, and can cause a severe and sometimes deadly respiratory disease," the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said. "The risk to the general public remains low."

The Sin Nombre hantavirus does not spread from person to person, unlike the Andes strain found on the MV Hondius, which can spread between humans but requires prolonged, close contact for transmission.

The virus is primarily carried by wild rodents, such as deer mice and white-footed mice. People typically become infected with the virus by inhaling microscopic particles from these rodents' urine, feces or saliva, according to Stanford Health.