Hantavirus becomes top trend on Twitter – why it’s not another coronavirus

On Tuesday, Hantavirus was one of the world’s top trends amid panic about the coronavirus outbreak.

While there is undue panic, the truth is that the hantavirus isn’t a new virus and there have been cases in the past.

CDC says: “Hantaviruses are a family of viruses spread mainly by rodents and can cause varied disease syndromes in people worldwide. Each hantavirus serotype has a specific rodent host species and is spread to people via aerosolized virus that is shed in urine, feces, and saliva, and less frequently by a bite from an infected host. The most important hantavirus in the United States that can cause HPS is the Sin Nombre virus, spread by the deer mouse.”But how do you contract the hantavirus? It’s not transmitted from human to human, but more from rodents carrying the virus with humans. To put things in perspective, a human that comes in contact with the faeces or urine of a rodent carrying the virus is likely to contract the disease even if s/he is a perfectly healthy individual.

However, the novel coronavirus and hantavirus are totally different, as coronavirus, as this New York Magazine article, explains is transmitted from one human to the other. The base of the virus is similar to a protein present in the lungs, which makes it easy for the virus to attach itself to the host thereby infecting the individual. There are also cases of animal to human infection, as well as human to animal infection. Studies suggest that humans contracted the virus from bats in China, while two dogs have been tested positive for coronavirus after interacting with humans, it was reported.