{"id":25793,"date":"2020-03-31T11:09:48","date_gmt":"2020-03-31T07:09:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/?p=25793"},"modified":"2020-03-31T11:26:15","modified_gmt":"2020-03-31T07:26:15","slug":"what-is-orthohantavirus-the-virus-many-are-googling-but-you-really-dont-need-to-worry-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/what-is-orthohantavirus-the-virus-many-are-googling-but-you-really-dont-need-to-worry-about\/","title":{"rendered":"What is orthohantavirus? The virus many are Googling (but you really don\u2019t need to worry about)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

According to Google Trends, the top globally trending topic this week is ‘orthohantavirus’, as spurious sites claim it’s next pandemic on the horizon. The claim is baseless<\/em><\/span><\/h5>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/u><\/span>Don\u2019t believe everything you read on social media.<\/span>\u00a0Shutterstock<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

According to Google Trends, the top globally trending topic this week is \u201corthohantavirus\u201d, as spurious sites claim it\u2019s the next pandemic on the horizon.<\/span><\/p>\n

Take it from me: it\u2019s not.<\/span><\/p>\n

This baseless claim circulating online underscores the need to get health information from reputable sources \u2013 and that you shouldn\u2019t believe everything you read on social media.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is orthohantavirus?<\/span><\/h4>\n

\u201cOrthohantavirus\u201d\u00a0– commonly known as hantavirus \u2013 is a very, very rare virus. There have never been confirmed human cases in Australia. The last two reported confirmed cases worldwide were in January in\u00a0Bolivia\u00a0and\u00a0Argentina.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is in a class of diseases called zoonoses, meaning it is a virus transmitted from animals to human. In this case, the animal in question is rodents (usually rats). Hantaviruses can cause severe disease, including bleeding and kidney failure.<\/span><\/p>\n

How does hantavirus spread?<\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n

According\u00a0to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), hantavirus is spread from several species of rodents in their urine, droppings, and saliva. It is thought that transmission occurs when they breathe in air contaminated with the virus.<\/span><\/p>\n

CDC also\u00a0reports:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  • if a rodent with the virus bites someone, the virus may be spread to that person, but this type of transmission is rare;<\/em><\/span><\/li>\n
  • scientists believe that people may be able to get the virus if they touch something that has been contaminated with rodent urine, droppings, or saliva, and then touch their nose or mouth;<\/em><\/span><\/li>\n
  • scientists also suspect people can become sick if they eat food contaminated by urine, droppings, or saliva from an infected rodent.<\/em><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    How worried should I be about hantavirus?<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

    Not very. In general, infectious disease specialists do worry about zoonoses \u2013 the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and Ebola are both important recent examples of animal-associated diseases that have crossed the species barrier.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Hantavirus, however, is not thought to be a big threat at the moment.<\/span><\/p>\n

    There\u2019s certainly no chatter among infectious disease physicians about hantavirus right now. I\u2019m not seeing anything concerning about it on any of my researcher networks and mailing lists that warn about virus outbreaks.<\/span><\/p>\n

    There was a recent report of a single case in China but there\u2019s no indication of any sort of spread.<\/span><\/p>\n

    I think, for now, let\u2019s concentrate on the pandemic we have \u2013 which is coronavirus and also the annual influenza season \u2013 rather than worry about uncommon viruses.<\/span><\/p>\n

    However, this coronavirus outbreak and everything that\u2019s come before reinforces that we need early warning systems to work out what\u2019s out there that could be threatening.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Yes, it is true that animals carry a lot of viruses but very few come across to humans.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Hantavirus is certainly not one we are particularly concerned about right now.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \n

    llen Cheng<\/strong><\/span>
    \n<\/span>Professor in Infectious Diseases Epidemiology, <\/span>
    \nMonash University<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n

    * Published in print edition on 30 March 2020<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      According to Google Trends, the top globally trending topic this week is ‘orthohantavirus’, as spurious sites claim it’s next pandemic on the horizon. The claim is baseless<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":25794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8348],"tags":[21808,22005,23115,8855,8365],"class_list":["post-25793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-conversation","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-covid-19-myths","tag-myths","tag-viruses"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Social-Media-2.jpg?fit=1000%2C641&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8QzSF-6I1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}