Public health officials plan to interview and collect blood samples from up to 2,500 Yosemite National Park workers as they hunt for clues in the biggest outbreak of the deadly hantavirus in nearly two decades, a state health official said on Monday.
The voluntary employee screening, scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, is the most recent effort to shed light on the rare, mouse-borne lung disease, which infected nine park visitors and killed three last summer.
“This is a highly unusual situation,” Barbara Materna, chief of the California Department of Public Health’s occupational health branch, told reporters.
“It is the largest outbreak of hantavirus that we’ve seen. We’re looking at it as an opportunity to learn more about this condition, how exposure happens and how to prevent it,” she added.
The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention sounded a worldwide alert about the virus over the summer, saying visitors to the popular insulated Curry Village tent cabins between June and August were at risk of contracting the disease.
The nine confirmed infections marked the biggest cluster of cases since the disease was first identified in the United States in 1993, when it infected 18 people in the US Southwest.