Why India should be worried about HANTA Virus? Doctor explains everything
Chairman and Managing Director at Unison Medicare and Research Centre, Dr Ishwar Gilada, said, “Hantavirus is not a new virus. It is an old virus... Hantavirus is the virus of rodents... It is a zoonotic infection. If human-to-human transmission occurs, that is very dangerous... It has an incubation period of four to eight weeks. So people getting infected almost four weeks or five weeks before will start showing symptoms now. But during the first week also they are infectious to others... Today, it has been reported that there are two Indians which are part of the crew on that ship. Those two Indians will obviously come back to India. We cannot deny them entry. We have to treat them... Also, one person from Singapore and one from UK, already de-boarded and de-embarked. They've gone to their countries. Our Indians are in Singapore. They travel and back and forth... We should be worried... This virus causes type HUNTA respiratory syndrome... Out of 100 people infected with this, 40 will die. It also causes hemorrhagic fever and renal syndrome... We are worried because there is no cure for this. Secondly, there is no preventive vaccine on this... Therefore, we have to keep our fingers crossed.”
Dr Puneet Misra, Professor of Community Medicine, AIIMS Delhi, said, “Hantavirus disease is a viral disease spread by a group of viruses and the recent episode, which has alarmed the public, happened on a cruise, and this infection is not new...COVID was a new virus. We did not know anything about COVID. The mode of transmission was through the respiratory route. This virus spreads through rodents, rats, mice...Human to human, there are some cases reported from one of the viruses, known as the Andes virus, which is very rare...Mainly, it's through rodents to humans.”
He further said, “The main symptoms are fatigue, fever, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, abdominal pain, and there may be muscular pain, joint pain. Depending on the kind of virus which is there, there may be symptoms related to the lungs, pulmonary symptoms, there may be symptoms related to the kidneys.”
