DES MOINES, Iowa – More than a dozen people who may have been exposed to the deadly hantavirus are now quarantining in Omaha, Nebraska at the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s National Quarantine Unit.
The Nebraska facility also treated some of the first covid patients in 2020. But health officials in Iowa say the current risk of hantavirus spreading is very low, and that this is not the next COVID-19. As the diseases are vastly different, especially when it comes to contagion.
“The COVID-19 virus is a pretty different virus in terms that it is very contagious, in that one person has the ability to infect many. Hantavirus is not like that. One person who has the infection can infect those in very, very close proximity and for long periods of time, and it’s not anywhere near contagious,” said Dr. Dhruv Patel, Infectious disease specialist, UnityPoint Health…