Preventing Hantavirus: Avoid Rodents and Clean Up Safely

Key points

• Hantaviruses are a family of viruses that can cause serious illness and death.
• People catch them from infected rodents or their droppings.
• Avoiding rodents and their urine and feces is the best prevention, and cleaning up after rodents takes special care.

How people get infected

Hantaviruses can cause serious illness affecting the lungs and kidneys, and spread mainly from rodents to people. When fresh urine, droppings or nesting material from an infected rodent is stirred up, the virus can get into the air, and people breathe it in. It can also spread when an infected animal's saliva, urine or feces gets into cuts or the eyes, nose or mouth.

Who's at risk

• People who handle or clean up after rodents, such as pest exterminators and animal caretakers.
• People who work with live rodents or keep them as pets, through bites or contact with saliva, urine, droppings or dirty bedding.
• Pet rodents, including rats, aren't recommended for families with children 5 or younger, pregnant women or people with weakened immune systems, who are at greater risk of serious illness.

Prevention

• Avoid contact with rodent urine, droppings, saliva and nests. If mice or rats are in or around your home or vehicle, clean up after them safely — urine, droppings, dead rodents and nests.
• Control rodents: this is the main way to prevent hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. Keep wild rodents out of homes and away from where people live.
• Pet rats: caring for them safely helps prevent hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, another hantavirus disease. Ask a veterinarian about testing new rats before bringing them home, especially if they'll live with other rats or in a breeding facility, and keep wild rats away — they naturally carry hantavirus.
• Use the right gear: pet owners and people cleaning up heavy infestations need different protective gear — see CDC's cleaning guidance.

More: CDC's brochure, You Can Prevent Hantavirus.

Sources

Based on "Hantavirus Prevention," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Its stock photograph is not reproduced.