Park Employees have Hanta antibodies

[The Yosemite Bear]

Zombie Virus be Afraid

Mariposa Gazette




January 31, 2013 Edition



Hantavirus antibodies show up in Yosemite workers




Erik Skindrud / GAZETTE EDITOR


A small number of Yosemite National Park workers can now boast that they survived an extremely close encounter with hantavirus.




Several Park workers who gave blood in October have come up positive for antibodies to the Sin Nombre strain that causes the deadly illness, California Department of Public Health spokesman Matt Conens has told the MARIPOSA GAZETTE.




Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, or HPS, killed three Yosemite visitors and sickened six more last summer. No Park workers were among the total.




Conens did not give the precise number of workers who tested positive, but said it was “fewer than one percent” of 569 employees who answered questions and donated blood as part of the study.





Most who took part in the voluntary testing work for the National Park Service. An unknown percentage work for Park concessionaire Delaware North Companies.




“This is a pretty major finding,” Dr. Charles Chiu of UC San Francisco’s Department of Medicine and a leading virus researcher, said when told of the result.




“One percent is still fairly rare, but it could be possible that there’s a higher rate of these subclinical infections than we thought,” Chiu said.




Questions remain, however. Researchers will want to test a wider sample of the population to see how many Californians have the virus antibodies. Scientists may also test family members of workers who tested positive.




Also called “inapparent,” subclinical refers to cases that are mild enough to escape notice. Of the nine cases in Yosemite last year, two did not display symptoms of full-blown HPS, previous reports noted.




This week’s announcement may raise some eyebrows in the Park, but is not unprecedented. A 2007 study in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases found Sin Nombre antibodies in three of 387 workers who had close exposure to deer mice in the American Southwest. That rate of exposure works out to .8 percent--the same ballpark as the recent Yosemite results.




The 2007 study found that none of the workers with hantavirus antibodies had used protective equipment like gloves or respirators.




“The overall probability of acquiring HPS when working with rodents appears to be 1 in 1,412,” the authors wrote.




At least one of the hantavirus-positive workers from the 2007 study recalled being seriously ill with symptoms that resembled HPS. He or she had been hospitalized, but never diagnosed with the illness.




The California Department of Public Health researchers are in touch with the Yosemite workers who tested positive, Conens said. “Due to privacy laws,” the department cannot release any further details about the workers--even their precise number.




“(We) may contact some employees to ask additional questions related to exposure to mice and potential risk factors,” the spokesman said.




The department’s full report on the Yosemite outbreak is expected this spring or early summer, Conens said.




Look for more on the Yosemite hantavirus findings in the Feb. 7 GAZETTE.

the Zombie Virus joke refers to the fact that none of the employees tested got sick, were IMMUNE

[Napoleon the Clown]

It doesn't mean they were immune or didn't get sick, they just didn't manifest symptoms to an extent they sought treatment.