Officials fear new hantavirus outbreak

The Associated Press

SANTA FE, N.M. -- Four New Mexicans have died this year of hantavirus, and experts are worried this could be the beginning of an especially bad year for the mouse-borne disease.

New Mexico has had five cases altogether this year -- the four deaths, plus a 10-year-old who survived a hantavirus infection. In all of last year, the state had a total of six cases, compared with two cases in 1997 and one in 1996. There were four deaths in all of 1998 and none in the two previous years. All of this year's cases have been from the northwestern part of the state, where the strain of hantavirus labeled "Sin Nombre" or "No Name" first was recognized in 1993. A hantavirus expert, Dr. Brian Hjelle, said there have been more than two dozen cases since the beginning of 1998 in the Four Corners states of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado. That includes two cases this year in Arizona and one in Colorado. That is more than twice as many as in the previous three years combined. "The conventional wisdom is, it's El Nino," said Hjelle, a professor in the pathology department at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. The cyclical warming of the Pacific Ocean made for a wetter-than-usual 1997-98, followed by a milder, drier winter just past. More rainfall creates greater ground cover and a bigger food supply for rodents. That can mean more deer mice, which carry the hantavirus. The disease is typically transmitted by airborne particles of rodent feces and urine. More than 200 cases of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome have been confirmed in 30 states since the 1993 outbreak -- some of them older, mysterious cases that weren't solved until hantavirus was identified. Nearly 45 percent of all cases are fatal.

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