90-Second Read: It’s Hantavirus season in Colorado. Here’s why that’s not as scary as the cruise ship outbreak.

Colorado is not impacted by the Hantavirus outbreak at this time," Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment spokesperson Hope Shuler wrote in an email. Given that the outbreak on the cruise ship is believed to have been spread person-to-person, it might raise a question: Could Colorado one day see a major human-spread outbreak of Hantavirus? Since 1993, Colorado has seen the second-most cases of Hantavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hantavirus is not one virus but a whole family of viruses. Colorado has a different one than what's on the cruise ship MV Hondius.

As Shuler explained, Colorado has the Sin Nombre version of Hantavirus, which has never been documented to travel person-to-person. While Hantavirus infections of any type are rare in the United States, Colorado tends to be a hot spot. In part because of that 1993 cluster, Hantavirus is often thought of as a Southwest-y desert disease. That's a comfort amid a major global public health spectacle. It's unlikely, at least from the virus that is endemic here.

Hantavirus is not a single virus but rather a whole family of viruses. In Colorado, the virus is spread primarily through contact with rodent droppings or urine. But the risk is actually quite spread out in Colorado, as a map of cases shows. Spring and summer are times of elevated risk in Colorado because that's when people are typically cleaning up their houses and outbuildings and encounter rodent droppings. The Andes version of the virus, which occurs in South America and is what's suspected on the ship, can spread person-to-person, though it is not believed to spread easily that way.

The state was among those affected by a Four Corners-region cluster in 1993 that was caused by an explosion in the deer mouse population following an El Niño winter and a boom in spring vegetation. There have been 37 known cases since 2016, according to CDPHE, and nine of those who were infected died.