Updated on
Summary Scientists hope to gain new insights into how Hantavirus is transmitted.
California researchers and public health officials have launched what they describe as a groundbreaking series of studies of a rare mouse-borne virus that has infected at least nine Yosemite National Park visitors, killing three of them, since June.By using the 1,200-square-mile (3,100-square-km) park and its rodent and human populations as a giant natural laboratory, scientists hope to gain new insights into how Hantavirus is transmitted, how varied it might be and why certain people seem more susceptible than others.The effort will include the first whole-genome sequencing for the Hantavirus strain that struck Yosemite over the summer in the biggest cluster of cases since the disease was first identified in the United States in 1993.Public health officials are also developing an unprecedented voluntary medical screening of the scenic parks 2,500-plus employees.Dr. Charles Chiu, an infectious disease specialist from the University of California, San Francisco, said researchers would take blood samples from workers in an effort to find clues to how the virus infects people and how it might be prevented.Chiu already has begun performing genome sequencing of the virus using tissue samples taken from patients infected in this summers outbreak, as well as with tissue taken from rodents carrying the virus in Yosemite and throughout California.Danielle Buttke, a National Park Service veterinary epidemiologist, said: We want to take this opportunity to learn as much about the disease as we possibly can ... I think theres a lot to be learned here.
