6. Hantavirus
Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) first gained attention in the United States in 1993, when a young Navajo man and his fiance living in the Four Corners area of the United States died within days of developing shortness of breath. Just a few months later, health authorities isolated hantavirus from a deer mouse living in the home of one of the infected people. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 600 people in the U.S. have now contracted HPS, and 36% have died from the disease.
The virus is not transmitted from one person to another, rather, people contract the disease from exposure to the droppings of infected mice. It is also important to know that a different hantavirus caused an outbreak in the early 1950s, during the Korean War, according to a 2010 paper in the journal Clinical Microbiology Reviews. More than 3,000 troops became infected, and about 12 percent of them died.
