Health Authority says Sask. at low risk of Hantavirus outbreak but residents should practice caution

The SHA is urging caution around mice and rodent droppings this spring and summer to help prevent hantavirus exposure. Jacob Carr reports.

Despite a recent outbreak of Hantavirus on a cruise ship, which is now docked at the Canary Islands, medical experts in Saskatchewan have said there is little to worry about in the province in terms of an outbreak.

That is largely due to the fact that the variant of the virus found in Canada can only be transmitted from rodents to humans.

The rare strain that was found on the ship can be transmitted from human to human.

“As far as the outbreak on the ship is concerned, obviously that is very concerning for the passengers on the ship, but everything is being handled,” said Saskatchewan Chief Medical Health Officer Dr. Saqib Shahab.

“The people who needed to come back to Canada are here and are being looked after in their respective provinces.”

Instead, the Saskatchewan Health Authority is reminding Saskatchewanians to be wary during the spring and summer seasons when cleaning out enclosed spaces that rodents such as mice like to hide in over the winter.

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“When you’re opening up a cottage or a shed that’s been closed over the winter, let it air out for half an hour. Don’t sweep using a broom that generates dust, use a wet mopping method,” said Shahab.

There is no current vaccine available for the Hantavirus.

However, researchers like Dr. Bryce Warner, a research scientist at the University of Saskatchewan’s Vaccine and Infectious Diseases Organization (VIDO), are hard at work to create said vaccine.

“As a researcher, you want the things you develop to actually make it into humans and have an impact, right? So, we’re obviously still very early in the stuff that we’re working on right now. Other people in different regions globally have been working on vaccines as well for a long time,” he said.

Warner said some of the researchers had good results in data in early human trials, but the vaccines got put on the shelf because there wasn’t a need or the funding to advance them.

“So, that’s an issue. But ultimately, we hope that some of these products can get to that point.”

Warner says that VIDO is currently in the very early stages of vaccine research, with clinical trial testing being done on mice and hamsters to test their immune response.