Deadly rodent-borne hantavirus is an emerging disease with pandemic potential
by Felicia Spencer, Virginia Tech
April 10, 2025
Hantavirus recently made news headlines as the cause of death for Betsy Arakawa, the wife of actor Gene Hackman, but little is commonly known about it other than its connection to rodents.
Virginia Tech researchers have gained a better understanding of this insidious virus by studying its rodent hosts in North America. Using National Science Foundation data, they found three hotspots of hantavirus circulation in wildlife – Virginia, Colorado, and Texas – and identified 15 rodent species as carriers, including six species that had not previously been identified as hosts of the virus.
The details of their study was published in Ecosphere.
“This project is timely because hantavirus is considered an emerging disease of pandemic potential with symptoms that resemble severe COVID-19 infections,” said Paanwaris Paansri, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation and co-author of the study.
Read the Ecosphere paper: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2.70209