All you need to know about hantavirus, its symptoms and how it spreads

We've been focusing way too much on coronavirus ever since the time of its outbreak. Although, there are a few other diseases that have been killing people. There are reports of bird flu and swine flu in India and other countries. And now we hear that a man has tested positive for hantavirus in China.

China's Global Time tweeted that the man from Yunnan Province lost his life while on his way back to Shandong Province for work on a bus on Monday. All the 32 people present on the bus were tested for the virus.

You'll mus be wondering what is hantavirus. Here's what it exactly means -

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), hantaviruses are ideally a family of viruses which are spread mainly by rodents and can cause many other diseases in people. It can also cause hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) and haemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS).

This disease is not airborne but spreads to people if they come in contact with feces, saliva and urine of rodents and less frequently by a bite from an infected host.

Here are the symptoms of hantavirus:

The early symptoms of HPS includes fever, muscle ache, fatigue as well as dizziness, headaches, chills and abdominal issues. If these symptoms are left untreated, it can very much lead to shortness of breath, coughing and can be fatal too with mortality rate of 38%, according to CDC.

The initial symptoms of HFRS remains the same, although it can cause low blood pressure, vascular leakage, acute kidney failure and acute shock too.

HPS can very much be passed on from one person to the other while HFRS transmission between people is quite rare.

According to the CDC, the rodent population control is one of the primary strategies for getting rid of hantavirus infections.