Colorado authorities have logged their first confirmed death from hantavirus since 2024, according to a statement on Monday from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
Officials noted that this new hantavirus case has been traced to a strain endemic to Colorado, Sin Nombre (Spanish for “nameless”), and not the now widely known Andes strain responsible for infecting at least 11 people onboard the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius and killing three. Unlike the Andes version, which has been primarily recorded in South America, Sin Nombre hantavirus cannot be spread person to person.
“Preliminary evidence suggests the infection was acquired by local exposure to rodents,” the state’s public health department spokesperson Hope Shuler wrote in an email, according to The Colorado Sun. “The risk to the general public remains low and the investigation is ongoing.”
However, this local strain has, nevertheless, been deadly over the years across America’s desert Southwest, contributing to a total of 121 known hantavirus infections, including 45 deaths, in Colorado and 129 cases, including 54 deaths, in New Mexico from 1993 to 2023. Infamously, New Mexico served as the backdrop to the hantavirus death of Gene Hackman’s wife, Betsy Arakawa, in 2025—an event that precipitated the Oscar-winning actor’s own death as he struggled in isolation with his advanced Alzheimer’s diagnosis that same year.
Sin Nombre season
The Sin Nombre strain of hantavirus spreads predictably this time of year, according to statements by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Residents in the state during this “spring cleaning” season are simply more likely to encounter rodent droppings while decluttering and tidying their living spaces or engaging in routine outdoor chores.
An advisory published by Boulder County, just north of where the new hantavirus death was reported in Douglas County, warns the public to be cautious when “cleaning barns, outbuildings, or grain storage areas,” as well as while “clearing shrubbery or doing hand-plowing.” The disease is primarily spread in Colorado by the deer mouse—a species of rodent found statewide—which means that these outdoor spaces can be just as risky as more obvious hotspots, like confined indoor spaces in known rodent-infesting buildings.
County officials, echoing advice from the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), recommend airing out any indoor areas suspected of harboring rodents and their excretions for up to 30 to 60 minutes prior to cleaning. Rodent droppings and nests should be soaked in disinfectant for approximately 10 to 15 minutes before cleaning, Boulder County officials said.
While contact with a rodent’s droppings or urine is the most likely pathway to hantavirus exposure, the disease can also be contracted via contact with live rodents, they noted, including pets.
“The bodily fluids from the mice carry the virus,” Lauren Bryan, an infection preventionist with the University of Colorado Health’s Yampa Valley Medical Center, explained in a statement on Monday. “So if people sweep up excrement or touch dead mice or get bitten, they may be exposed.”
Sin Nombre symptoms
The incubation period for the hantavirus can last up to six weeks. Infections might produce fever and chills, but in nearly all cases the virus manifests as severe leg, hip, and back pain.
“That’s the really distinct feature of the virus,” according to Bryan at UCHealth. “You may not get the other symptoms, but you will have leg or hip or back pain that doesn’t go away with ibuprofen or Tylenol.”
According to UCHealth, the virus can progress quickly to serious inflammation in the heart and lungs, which can lead to a pneumonia-like buildup of fluid in the lungs and potentially death.
In the case of the MV Hondius, for example, the third of the cruise ship’s known cases, a male passenger, reported signs of pneumonia to the ship’s doctor on April 24, leading to his medical evacuation to South Africa, where he remains in intensive care but is gradually improving.
Read the full article here
