Rodents in the United States thatCarry Hantavirus
Signs & Symptoms for Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome(HPS)
Due to the small number of HPS cases, the “incubation time” is not positively known. However, on the basis of limited information, it appears that symptoms may develop between 1 and 5 weeks after exposure to fresh urine, droppings, or saliva of infected rodents.Early Symptoms
Early symptoms include fatigue, fever and muscle aches, especially in the large muscle groups—thighs, hips, back, and sometimes shoulders. These symptoms are universal.There may also be headaches, dizziness, chills, and abdominal problems, such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain. About half of all HPS patients experience these symptoms.
Late Symptoms
Four to 10 days after the initial phase of illness, the late symptoms of HPS appear. These include coughing and shortness of breath, with the sensation of, as one survivor put it, a “…tight band around my chest and a pillow over my face” as the lungs fill with fluid.
- U.S. health officials have sent warnings to 39 other countries that their citizens who stayed in Yosemite National Park tent cabins this summer may have been exposed to a deadly mouse-borne hantavirus, a park service epidemiologist said on Tuesday. Of the 10,000 people thought to be at risk of contracting hantavirus pulmonary syndrome from their stays in Yosemite between June and August, some 2,500 live outside the United States, Dr. David Wong told Reuters in an interview. Wong said U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials notified 39 countries over the weekend, most of them in the European Union, that their residents may have been exposed to the deadly virus. The lung disease has so far killed two men and sickened four other people, all U.S. citizens, prompting the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to issue a health alert. Officials are concerned that more Yosemite visitors could develop the lung disease in the next month or so. Most of the victims identified so far were believed to have been infected while staying in one of 91 “Signature” tent-style cabins in the park’s popular Curry Village camping area. There is no cure for the disease, but early detection through blood tests greatly increases survival rates. “I want people to know about this so they take it seriously,” Wong said. “We’re doing our due diligence to share the information.” Last week, park officials shut down the insulated “Signature” tent cabins after finding deer mice, which carry the disease and can burrow through holes the size of pencil erasers, infesting the double walls. <<
TB Symptoms
Symptoms of TB disease include:
- a bad cough that lasts 3 weeks or longer
- pain in the chest
- coughing up blood or sputum
- weakness or fatigue
- weight loss
- no appetite
- chills
- fever
- sweating at night
Death Defined Black Death Causes and Symptoms
The Transmission of Plague
Plague is carried by rodents like rats and squirrels, but it is transmitted to humans by the fleas who live on them. A flea, having ingested plague-infected blood from its host, can live for as much as a month away from that host before he needs to find another warm body to live on. When a blood-engorged flea attempts to draw blood from another victim, it invariably injects into that victim some of the blood already within it. If the injected blood contains the bacterium yersinia pestis, the result is Bubonic Plague. Fleas were, alas, such a part of everyday life that no one noticed them much. In this invisible manner the plague spread from rat to human and to cat and dog, as well.
Pneumonic plague is airborne. It is contracted by breathing the infected water droplets breathed (or coughed) out by a victim of the disease. The pneumonic form was much more virulent and spread much more quickly and just as invisibly.
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