India Today, New Delhi :
Reports of a person in China dying due to a virus called hantavirus have spread panic at a time when the world is battling the pandemic of novel coronavirus, which began in China. The novel coronavirus has killed over 17,000 people around the world and the outbreak is yet to be brought under control.
On Tuesday morning, hantavirus became one of the top trends on Twitter after the Chinese state media tweeted about one person in the country dying due the virus. However, it turns out, hantavirus is not a new virus and has been infecting humans for decades.
Global Times, a state-run English-language newspaper, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday, “A person from Yunnan Province died while on his way back to Shandong Province for work on a chartered bus on Monday. He was tested positive for hantavirus. Other 32 people on bus were tested.”
Global Times’s hantavirus report on Twitter has been shared over 6,000 times.
Some people are calling it a new virus but so is not the case. United States’s National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) in a journal writes that currently, the hantavirus genus includes more than 21 species.
In 1978, a causative agent Korean Hemerologic fever was isolated from small infected field rodent near Hantan river in South Korea.
Reports of a person in China dying due to a virus called hantavirus have spread panic at a time when the world is battling the pandemic of novel coronavirus, which began in China. The novel coronavirus has killed over 17,000 people around the world and the outbreak is yet to be brought under control.
On Tuesday morning, hantavirus became one of the top trends on Twitter after the Chinese state media tweeted about one person in the country dying due the virus. However, it turns out, hantavirus is not a new virus and has been infecting humans for decades.
Global Times, a state-run English-language newspaper, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday, “A person from Yunnan Province died while on his way back to Shandong Province for work on a chartered bus on Monday. He was tested positive for hantavirus. Other 32 people on bus were tested.”
Global Times’s hantavirus report on Twitter has been shared over 6,000 times.
Some people are calling it a new virus but so is not the case. United States’s National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) in a journal writes that currently, the hantavirus genus includes more than 21 species.
In 1978, a causative agent Korean Hemerologic fever was isolated from small infected field rodent near Hantan river in South Korea.
