Yosemite is synonymous with stunning natural settings and a chance to get away from it all. But in the past few weeks, Yosemite has attracted unwanted attention after a Hantavirus outbreak in the park.
Yosemite's Curry Village, where several people who were infected with hantavirus stayed.
Authorities initially focussed on 91 tent cabins in a specific area of the park, which had approximately 10,000 visitors between June and August and is where most of the people who are known to have contracted the virus stayed. But after a man who visited a different area of the park at a higher elevation tested positive for the virus this week, the investigation was widened and another 12,000 people were added to the list of those at risk, upping the total to 22,000.
Brian Amman is an ecologist with the CDC who studies virus outbreaks and has been working the phone hotlines talking to people who might have been exposed to the virus. Although only a tiny fraction of those people are likely to be infected, panic is inevitable. "You feel bad for a lot of them, because they’re scared, and rightfully so," Amman says.
The Syndrome
The most common form of the hantavirus found in the U.S. is the Sin nombre virus, carried in deer mice, a small mouse with a range that stretches across much of the United States. Although the syndrome associated with the hantavirus is exceedingly rare in the U.S. (only about 600 cases have been documented here), it has a fatality rate of close to 40 percent.
Once a person becomes infected through contact with the urine, saliva, or feces of an in... http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/med-tech/whats-going-on-with-yosemite-and-hantavirus-12479810?click=pm_latest
