The virus is mainly transmitted to people when they breathe in air contaminated with the virus. This happens when fresh rodent urine, droppings or nesting materials are stirred up. Researchers believe that you may be able to get the virus if you touched something that had been contaminated with rodent urine, droppings or saliva, and then touched your nose or mouth. Researchers also suspect that if virus-infected rodent urine, droppings or saliva contaminates food that you eat, you could also become sick. That is another reason why disinfecting rodent-infested areas is so important in preventing transmission of the virus.
Transmission can happen anyplace that infected rodents have infested.
Therefore, the most sensible way to avoid contact with rodents is to prevent rodents from infesting the places where you live and work, and to follow safety precautions if you do stumble into a rodent-infested area. Control of these diseases varies depending on whether or not an intermediate host is involved. In the case of direct infection with a mosquito-borne disease, control is most effectively approached through management of the vector itself. Tick-borne diseases involve an intermediate reservoir of infection and therefore are more difficult to control. Avoidance tactics are the only suggested mitigative measures to date for minimizing tick-borne disease transmission.