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Transmission Details: So How Does "Aerosolization"
Really Work?
For a hantavirus to cause HPS, the virus must travel from the rodents
that carry it to a person. A common way this happens is when a person
breathes in the hantavirus from the air.
 Let's
create an imaginary scenario and go through the process step by
step. Say you have a storage room in your home that you hardly ever
enter. You keep old furniture there, old newspapers and magazines,
and so on.
At some point, a group of deer mice find their way into the room,
looking for places to build nests. They found their way into the
room through a crack—deer mice can squeeze through holes as
small as a shirt button! Some mice chew through the fabric of an
old armchair and build a nest inside it. Other mice shred bits of
magazines and build nests under the shredded pieces.
A few of these mice are infected with the hantavirus. The infected
mice don't show any signs of being sick. In fact, the virus does
not seem to make them ill at all; it simply lives in their bodies.
However, the virus is shed continuously from them: into the droppings
and urine they leave around the room, and into their saliva, which
dries on anything they have chewed, such as nesting material. Out
in the environment like this, the virus can live for several days.
Meanwhile, you decide to clean up your storage room.
You go inside, spend a few minutes moving boxes and furniture. The
mice hear you coming and scurry away, leaving a trail of fresh urine!
  
Because you find mouse droppings and some of the furniture stuffing
the mice have used as nesting material, you get a broom and sweep
up the mess. As you move around and sweep, tiny particles of fresh
urine, droppings and saliva, with the virus in them, get kicked
up into the air. This is the aerosolization. It is these tiny particles
that you breathe in—and this is the beginning of becoming sick
with HPS.
Because the virus is spread when virus-containing particles are
stirred up into the air, an essential HPS prevention tactic in areas
showing signs of rodents is to avoid actions that raise dust and
to carefully wet the area down with disinfectant. The less chance
the virus has to get into the air, the less chance it will be breathed
in!
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National
Center for Infectious Diseases
