Health education
This page is educational and cannot diagnose illness. Hantavirus symptoms can overlap with many other conditions, and severe disease can progress quickly.
CDC describes early HPS symptoms such as fatigue, fever, and muscle aches.
Later HPS symptoms can include coughing and shortness of breath as the lungs are affected.
If symptoms follow rodent exposure, contact a healthcare provider or public health authority and describe the exposure.
Symptoms alone cannot confirm hantavirus infection. Clinical evaluation, exposure history, and appropriate testing are needed.
Difficulty breathing or rapidly worsening illness requires urgent medical attention.
Tell healthcare professionals about contact with rodents, droppings, urine, saliva, nests, enclosed dusty spaces, cabins, sheds, vehicles, or occupational exposures.
Source transparency
Links open official public health or agency-published source material used for the summaries on this page.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
General description of hantavirus diseases, transmission, reservoirs, symptoms, and risk reduction.
Broad public overview; local health departments remain the source for local reporting requirements and investigations.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Explains national notifiable condition reporting and surveillance definitions.
Surveillance case definitions are for public health classification and are not clinical diagnostic guidance for individual patients.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
General prevention principles for avoiding rodent urine, droppings, saliva, and nesting materials.
Does not replace local public health, occupational safety, or clinician guidance for high-risk settings.