CDC says, Hantavirus isn't a global public health threat

A man who died in China Monday reportedly tested positive for hantavirus, but that doesn't necessarily mean you should worry another pandemic is coming.

Hantaviruses are a family of virus that spread through rodents, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In Yunnan Province, a man died on his way back to Shandong Province, according to Global Times, an English-language Chinese news outlet.

"He was tested positive for #hantavirus. Other 32 people on the bus were tested," the news outlet tweeted. 

The tweet, sent amid a pandemic caused by a new coronavirus, has been shared more than 15,000 times.

Though countries across the globe are on high alert due to uncertainty around the coronavirus, there is no indication that the hantavirus poses a global public health threat.

According to the CDC, hantavirus cases are rare, and they spread as a result of close contact with rodent urine, droppings or saliva. 

Certain kinds of rats and mice in the United States can carry the virus, which is transmitted when someone breathes in contaminated air.

"The hantaviruses that cause human illness in the United States cannot be transmitted from one person to another," the CDC says on its website. Rare cases in Chile and Argentina have seen person-to-person transmission when a person is in close contact with someone sickened by a type of hantavirus called Andes virus, the CDC says.

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