CINCINNATI (WKRC)— The recent death of Betsy Arakawa, wife of actor Gene Hackman, from hantavirus has raised questions about the virus’s spread and treatment. Hantavirus, though rare, can be life-altering for those who contract it.
Evie Hermunslie, a teenager from near Fargo, North Dakota, shared her survival story. “So about two days before we left I got a headache and started feeling off,” said Evie, who was 14 at the time. Her condition worsened during a trip to the Ark Encounter, leading her family to rush her to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. There, she was placed on a heart-lung machine. “If we had been at home, we don’t believe Evie would have made it,” said her father, Ryan Hermunslie.
Dr. Robert Frenck, an infectious disease specialist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, explained that hantavirus is transmitted through the secretions of rodents, primarily mice and sometimes rats. “The virus lives asymptomatically in the rodents and so it gets into their secretions and their saliva and their urine but it doesn’t make the rodents sick,” said Dr. Frenck. The virus is not spread from human to human…