Hantavirus: A Mystery Solved

As part of their investigation, the medical team consulted with Navajo elders and medicine men, who provided some vital clues. They pointed out that after five years of drought, an unusually snowy winter and rainy spring had produced an abundance of pi–on nuts and the mice that eat them. The elders also recalled that the same environmental conditions had preceded outbreaks of disease in 1918 and 1936.

In Navajo tradition, mice and other rodents are agents of disharmony that can result in death. Thus the elders were particularly sensitive to the mice that emerged to eat the pi–on nuts, thus alerting the medical specialists to link the mysterious outbreak with the sudden prevalence of mice.

The disease proved to be a strain of hantavirus, a virus that can be carried by rodents and excreted in their feces and urine. Such precautions as wetting the floor with an antiseptic solution (e.g., bleach) and wearing a mask while sweeping in the home, could help protect people from inhaling the dust particles that contain the virus, and thus forestall further spread of the disease.