A rare virus has killed one person in the Heartland Health Region this summer while another death in the region is being investigated to determine if the same virus is the culprit.

Phil Curry, zoonotic diseases consultant with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health, said complications from hantavirus has been confirmed by health officials as the cause of death in the first west central Saskatchewan case. He said hantavirus is caused by exposure to airborne particles from the droppings, urine and saliva of infected deer mice, so people need to be careful when cleaning up areas that might have had a mouse infestation over the winter months.

“Deer mice are found throughout Saskatchewan, but they’re more common in rural and semi-rural areas,” said Curry, noting hantavirus has been detected in many samples of deer mice in southern Saskatchewan this year. “They put their nests in stumps, hollow tree cavities, under logs, abandoned bird nests and manmade structures such as wood piles and old cars. They might even enter buildings like garages and homes later in the fall when the weather turns cool. If you think of a lot of areas like farms or small rural communities you’ve got nature right next door to you and deer mice are one of the more common mice in those areas.”

A deer mouse can be distinguished from the common house mouse because of its two-tone colour. The deer mouse has a dark brown back and a white belly, feet and under-tail, while a house mouse is uni-coloured.

Curry said deer mice infected with this strain of hantavirus is “pretty exclusive” to Western North America and the Prairie Provinces. He said since the virus was first characterized in 1994 there have been 24 reported cases of hantavirus in Saskatchewan with seven of them proving fatal.

“It’s important to note too that we basically tend to see the more severe cases and not everybody gets a severe case,” he said. “There is a lot that we don’t know about it. It seems to affect all age groups, so it’s not just people with compromised immune systems. It can affect anybody including young healthy working adults.”

Common symptoms of hantavirus in humans include fever, muscle aches, cough, headaches, nausea and vomiting. If a person develops a fever, cough and shortness of breath within one to six weeks of exposure to a mouse-infested area, immediate medical attention is required.

“Hantavirus is widespread, the actual virus in mice,” said Curry. “We’re asking people to make sure they take precautions when they clean out a building. It’s very important to ventilate a building properly. It is very important not to stir up the dust and breath in the dust particles, so wear gloves, wet mop the area down, don’t use a vacuum cleaner and don’t use an air hose or sweep vigorously. Then you can disinfect the area with one-part-to-10 of bleach.

“For more heavier infestations, it is advised that you take more precautions like wearing coveralls, gloves, and maybe even a mask and eye goggles if you’re cleaning overhead on shelves and things like that. You don’t want the dust to fall in your eyes.”