There is a secondary nosocomial spread of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever. Hantaan virus cycles among rodents, probably by aerosol or fomite transmission from infected rodent urine. Human infection is incidental. Diagnosis Knowledge of the geographic site of exposure, season, and presence of arthropods leads to presumptive diagnosis in febrile cases. Control of the rodent host is important for hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome.
Bunyaviruses are responsible for a number of febrile diseases in humans and other vertebrates.
They have either a rodent host or an arthropod vector and a vertebrate host. Bunyaviruses cause several diseases of human and domestic animals, including fever, hemorrhagic fever, renal failure, encephalitis, meningitis, blindness, and, in domestic animals, congenital defects. Most illnesses are self-limited fevers that last 1 to 4 days and are accompanied by headache, muscle aches, nausea, conjunctival injection, and generalized weakness. Rift Valley fever may mimic the febrile, encephalitic, or hemorrhagic illness of other bunyavirus infections, and the patient may also go blind as a result of retinal vasculitis. These illnesses are significant, currently uncontrolled human diseases.