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About Hantavirus

What Is Hantavirus?

Hantaviruses are a family of viruses carried by rodents that can cause severe disease in humans. They are classified into two clinical syndromes: Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS), found primarily in the Americas, and Hemorrhagic Fever with Renal Syndrome (HFRS), found primarily in Europe and Asia. Per the CDC, 38% of people who develop HPS respiratory symptoms may die from the disease.

Transmission

Humans contract hantavirus primarily through aerosolized droplets of rodent urine, droppings, or saliva. Human-to-human transmission is exceptionally rare, documented only in the Andes virus strain in South America.

Symptoms

HPS begins 1–8 weeks after exposure with fever, muscle aches, fatigue, then progresses to coughing and respiratory failure. HFRS causes fever, kidney failure, and bleeding, progressing through five phases over several weeks.

Geographic Distribution

Hantaviruses occur worldwide. Sin Nombre virus causes HPS in North America, Andes virus in South America, and Puumala, Dobrava, Seoul, and Hantaan viruses cause HFRS in Europe and Asia. The CDC reports 20–30 US cases annually.

Data Sources

IDNameTypeLicenseURLRefreshReliabilityDescription
owid Our World in Data COVID-19 Dataset CSV CC BY 4.0 link 24h 85% COVID-19 case/death data (disabled — no longer tracked).
who_flu WHO FluNet API WHO Terms link 24h 95% Global influenza surveillance data. Also covers other respiratory viruses.
global_health Global.health Outbreak Data CSV CC BY 4.0 link 12h 80% Crowdsourced Hantavirus timeline with narrative case descriptions. Primary Hantavirus data source.
who_disease_news WHO News RSS RSS WHO Public Data link 3h 90% WHO corporate news feed. Filtered for disease outbreak keywords.
who_don WHO Disease Outbreak News API WHO Public Data link 6h 85% Structured DON articles via WHO OData API. Covers ebola, hantavirus, mpox, polio, and other PHEIC events.
gdelt GDELT Project API CC0 link 15min 60% Global news monitor. Lower reliability but highest frequency. Good for early detection.
cdc_nndss CDC NNDSS Hantavirus Data API CDC Open Data link 24h 90% US NNDSS weekly hantavirus case counts via Socrata open data portal. Includes HPS and non-HPS breakdown.
ecdc ECDC CDTR Weekly Reports PDF ECDC Public Data link 24h 75% European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control weekly threats report. Covers hantavirus and other outbreaks in EU/EEA.
intel Inference Engine NLP Internal link 3h 60% Regex-based case count inference from narrative news text. Extracts cases/deaths/CFR from unstructured reports.

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