Umeå findings raise the question: Can hantavirus infection spread among humans? In connection with last year’s epidemic, a research team at Umeå University in Sweden has managed for the first time to show that hantavirus exists in human saliva. This raises the question of whether this contagion can spread among humans. In Sweden, a form of hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome called nephropathia epidemica occurs primarily in the northern parts of the country. It is a zoonosis, that is, an infectious disease that is normally transmitted between animals and humans when a bank vole, for instance, releases Puumala hantavirus via its saliva, urine, and feces. Normally humans become infected by breathing in dust polluted by virus from bank vole secretions or by direct contact with the animal.
