94% of hantavirus cases in the United States have occurred west of the Mississippi River

 

With New Mexico leading the pack.

Map and headline: MedPage Today, 5/12/2026

Rachael Robertson reports:

There have been hundreds of hantavirus cases in the U.S. over the 30 years that the CDC has been tracking it -- and most of those cases have been in one region. 

CDC began tracking laboratory-confirmed hantavirus cases in the U.S. in 1993 when there was an outbreak of severe respiratory illnesses in the Four Corners region where Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico meet. Two years later, hantavirus became a nationally notifiable disease, meaning it is now reported through the Nationally Notifiable Disease Surveillance System when a patient has a fever and diagnosis is laboratory confirmed. The most recent CDC hantavirus data are from 2023. 

In that 30-year time period, there have been 890 laboratory-confirmed hantavirus cases; 859 involved hantavirus pulmonary syndrome cases while the remainder were non-pulmonary infections. About a third (35%) of people who had hantavirus died. [emphasis added]

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