7 Mystery Illness Cases May Have Struck Texas

AUSTIN, Texas - The rodent-borne virus that has killed at least a dozen people in the Southwest may have infected 16 people in Texas, health officials said yesterday.

The 16 reports come from doctors in 12 counties across the state who have observed patients with symptoms that fit the illness thought to be caused by the hantavirus strain, said Texas Commissioner of Health Dr. David Smith.

Jeff Taylor, an epidemiologist with the Texas Department of Health, said of the 16 possible cases, six people have died, including an East Texas woman who apparently contracted the virus from rodent droppings near her home in Zavalla.

But Beverly Ray, a nurse epidemiologist with the TDH, cautioned, "Most of the reports are not patients that we suspect will be positive for the virus. But we are taking them all very seriously and investigating all of them."

This week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta found hantavirus antibodies in the blood of the 58-year-old nurse from Zavalla, who died last month. The CDC still wants to test tissue samples before declaring hers a definite hantavirus death, but said it probably was.

The East Texas woman had not traveled to New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah, the four states where all previous cases of the disease had been reported. Most of the cases were clustered where those states meet, called Four Corners.

The agency is investigating 41 possible cases, including 22 deaths, of severe respiratory illness caused by hantavirus.

Of the 16 confirmed cases, 11 were in New Mexico, four in Arizona and one in Colorado. Twelve of them died.

Hantavirus is spread through close contact with rodents and their droppings. The CDC says deer mice probably are spreading it.