Yesterday, while on recess duty at my daughter’s school I noticed two kindergarteners making sand castles near the playground’s baseball diamond.
And by sand castles, I mean dirt mounds.
By the time I realized what they were doing, the bell rang and they started dashing toward the cafeteria door to line-up for lunch. Fortunately, another mom was able to make them out through their respective dirt clouds, intercept them and escort them to the restroom to wash up.
“Did you see how filthy they were?” the mom asked as I held the cafeteria doors open.
“Human petri dishes,” I sardonically remarked.
I figured my comment would garner a smirk at the most. I wasn’t prepared for where my co-recess mom was going to take the conversation.
“This school should be more careful about letting kids play in the same places that rodents run around. Don’t they worry about hantavirus?”
Hantavirus?
And here I was thinking dirt-covered hands + sandwiches, chips and cookies = Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease, vomiting, diarrhea, or strep throat.
Hantavirus. That wasn’t even on my radar.
Thanks, co-recess mom.
As if parents don’t have enough to worry about.
Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome; you’ve probably heard about it by now. The severe respiratory disease made headlines when thousands of visitors to Yosemite National Park were exposed to the rodent-borne illness this summer. Three of eight visitors who contracted the disease have died. Officials are calling the outbreak unprecedented, as more than one hantavirus infection from the same location in the same year is extremely rare.
According to the CDC, if treated early, patients have a good chance of survival. However, there is no cure, and more than one-third of patients who contract the illness die.
Symptoms of hantavirus include flu-like symptoms, such as headache, dizziness, fever, shortness of breath, chills and muscle and body aches. Health officials also note that the “illness can take six weeks to incubate before rapid acute respiratory and organ failure.”
So what does this scary sickness mean to you, me, and those kids playing in the dirt at my daughter’s school?
According to the CDC, wild mice and rats can carry the virus, but the “common house mouse” does not. People can contract hantavirus by touching rodent urine or droppings. In addition, you can also get the virus if dried rodent droppings or urine is stirred up in dust and breathed in.
In order to protect your family from hantavirus the CDC suggests:
*Keep a clean home, especially the kitchen (wash dishes, clean counters and floor, and keep food covered in rodent-proof containers).
*Keep a tight-fitting lid on garbage, and discard uneaten pet food at the end of the day.
*Set and keep spring-loaded rodent traps near baseboards because rodents tend to run along walls and in tight spaces rather than out in the open.
And always have your kids wash their hands before eating or touching their face, regardless of whether or not they were playing in a place accessible to rodents.