Hantavirus is a potentially deadly rodent-borne virus that leads capillaries in the lungs to leak, so that nearly half the victims drown in their own blood serum. That's up from an average of one or two in the years since the 1993 epidemic, Yates said Friday at a hantavirus conference sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1993, almost one-third of deer mice were infected, Yates says.
Doctors believe that people become infected by inhaling dust from rodent droppings.
In 1993, Sin Nombre infected 48 people, killing 27 of them. One of those cases, reported last month, involved a woman in the high country of Arizona. She was apparently exposed after snowed-in mice sought food and shelter in her home.