B.C., Whatcom County deaths prompt hantavirus warnings

KELOWNA, B.C. – British Columbia residents have been warned to be cautious about spring cleaning in areas infested by deer mice, after a 14-year-old boy and a Washington state woman died of hantavirus.

The 14-year-old Naramata-area boy began feeling ill two weeks ago. He was initially hospitalized for respiratory distress in this south-central British Columbia town June 11 and then transferred to British Columbia Children’s Hospital in Vancouver, where he died Friday.

He was the fifth resident of the province in about a decade to die of hantavirus, which is transmitted mostly by deer mouse droppings.

A warning also was issued by the British Columbia Center for Disease Control after Sara M. Shields-Priddy, 44, who resided north of Lynden, Wash., near the international border, died of hantavirus March 22.

Health officials say the risk of hantavirus typically rises when dried mouse droppings are stirred into the air and are inhaled during spring cleaning, especially in rural cabins, barns and garages.

The boy who died lived in an area that was known to have had a deer mouse infestation. And Whatcom County Health Officer Greg Stern said Shields-Priddy had “a long history of exposure to rat droppings and debris in a storage area.”

In May, a 49-year-old eastern Idaho man died of hantavirus, prompting officials with Idaho’s Central Health District to issue a hantavirus warning as well. And Monday, state health officials received a report of a second Idaho man who contracted hantavirus and survived, Idaho Department of Health and Welfare spokesman Tom Shanahan said.

The man who survived the virus was a farmworker from Cassia County in his 40s. He developed symptoms while visiting family in Utah and was treated there, Shanahan said. The man’s name was not released.

Since 1978 there have been 21 cases of hantavirus diagnosed in Idaho. Seven were fatal.

Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say environmental conditions this year could increase the risk of human exposure to hantavirus.