The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on Saturday last week reported a hantavirus case.
The CDC said that a man in his 40s was last month bitten by a mouse in his home as he tried to step on it.
He was admitted to a local hospital the next day and tested positive for hantavirus, it said, adding that the virus is usually transmitted when people come into contact with saliva, feces or urine of rodents.
Photo: Chang Chung-yi, Taipei Times
The virus’ incubation period is between several days and two months, and common symptoms include a continuous fever, eye redness, feeling weak, back pain, headache, stomach pain, vomiting and weight loss, it said.
People who contract hanta hemorrhagic fever usually start bleeding within three to six days after the onset of symptoms, it said.
Other symptoms such as increased levels of protein in the urine and production of abnormally small amounts of urine, as well as hypotension, might also occur, it said.
Hantavirus infections might lead to a deterioration of kidney function and in some cases kidney failure, resulting in shock, it said.
However, the symptoms usually abate after treatment, the CDC said.
As of Thursday last week, the CDC had reported eight hantavirus cases in Taiwan this year, compared with seven cases in the whole of last year, and one each in 2018 and 2019.
Since 2011, the agency has reported 32 cases, 20 males and 12 females.
Twenty-five of them, or 78.1 percent, were aged 40 or older, CDC data showed.
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