Mediaboss Marketing

13 September 2012 Last updated at 20:12 ET

Yosemite park rangers have expanded a health advisory about a killer virus to nearly a quarter of a million people who have stayed there since June.

The mouse-borne hantavirus is now known to have infected nine people - three of whom have died. There is no known cure.

Officials at the California park insist their letters to more than 230,000 people are purely precautionary.

Deer mice, which spread the infection, have increased in number and now the rodents are being trapped and killed.

Yosemite initially sent a warning last month to 1,700 campers who stayed at a specific campsite, before gradually expanding that figure as infections emerged elsewhere.

Most of the cases involved guests at the Signature cabins in Curry Village, but one case involved someone who had stayed at multiple High Sierra camps in wilderness areas.

A ninth person is now recovering after being stricken with the disease following a visit to Yosemite in early July, said National Park Service spokesman John Quinley on Thursday.

It can take six weeks for the emergence of early symptoms such as aches and fever, or in half the cases headaches and sickness. It then moves into the lungs.

One third of cases are fatal, but identifying it early through blood tests increases a person's chance of survival.

Original post:
Yosemite virus alert to 230,000

Yosemite will stay open despite being home a deadly virus that has killed two people. Picture: Robert Holmes Caltour Source: Supplied

THE deadly virus raising fears at California's Yosemite National Park does not spread easily, and, despite two recent deaths, does not warrant closing the park, a spokeswoman said Monday.

So far, at least six cases have been confirmed of the hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS), a rare but serious illness that kills one in three victims and cannot be treated.

"The hantavirus is contracted by breathing a particle from mice faeces and mice urine,'' and is spread by the deer mouse, a rodent that lives in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, park spokeswoman Kari Cobb explained.

"As long as individuals are staying in an area with good ventilation,'' and keeping watch for signs of mice in the area, "they should be fine,'' she said.

"You cannot contract the hantavirus if you're just walking around the park,'' she emphasized, adding that visitors need not wear a mask to avoid contagion.

Cobbs said that while some cancelled their reservations for the long holiday weekend ending with Labor Day on Monday, the gaps had been filled and overall the park was about as busy as usual.

She did not give specific figures, but during an average weekend, Yosemite hosts around 7500 tourists.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned that about 10,000 visitors could have been exposed to the deadly virus while staying at the park's scenic Signature Tent Cabins.

But park officials estimated just 3000 people stayed in the lodgings between June 10 and August 24, when they could have run the risk of developing the disease within the next six weeks.

View post:
Yosemite open despite killer virus

By Nick Bramhill

Tuesday, September 04, 2012

Irish holidaymakers who are experiencing flu-like symptoms after travelling to far-flung countries over the summer have been warned they could be carrying a killer virus.

Chiefs of the Tropical Medical Bureau said countries as diverse as Chile, the Ivory Coast, India, and Paraguay had all seen outbreaks of hantarivus in the past five months a rare lung disease for which there is no cure.

Symptoms for the virus, which is carried in rodent faeces, urine, and saliva, are similar to those in common flus and include headaches, fevers, shortness of breath, muscle aches, and coughs.

However, experts at the medical bureau warned that symptoms can appear six weeks after exposure, meaning holidaymakers might have returned home to Ireland and dismissed their condition as nothing more than the common flu.

The warnings come after it emerged that two people have died with thousands more are at risk from an outbreak of the deadly virus in Californias Yosemite National Park.

Dr Graham Fry, of the Tropical Medical Bureau, said: "I would urge anyone who has travelled to a country where there has been an outbreak of hantavirus over the past five months and who has experienced symptoms to seek medical advice immediately.

"The same goes for other rare diseases, such as rabies. If people are feeling unwell, having been over to a foreign country, they need to be aware that their ill health might be linked to their travel history."

Meanwhile, camp officials in Yosemite National Park are in the process of contacting the 10,000 mos-tly US citizens who they fear might be in danger of contracting hantavirus.

Read the original:
Sick holidaymakers ‘could have deadly virus’

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 17:31 EST, 2 September 2012 | UPDATED: 17:31 EST, 2 September 2012

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) is contacting Britons who may have visited the United States national park at the centre of an outbreak of a deadly virus that has killed two people.

Around 100 UK travellers have been identified as having stayed at Yosemite National Park between mid-June and the end of August.

The agency said it was not aware of any cases of Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS) - which is carried by rodents - in Britons who had been there on holiday.

Yosemite Valley, a glacial valley in Yosemite National Park in the western Sierra Nevada mountains of California. Up to 10,000 people who stayed in the lodging cabins in the parks Curry Village may have been exposed to the virus

But it is warning people who had stayed at the park and also providing health advice and information on the situation in the US.

A total of up to 10,000 people who stayed in the lodging cabins in the parks Curry Village may have been exposed to the potentially fatal disease.

The California Department of Public Health has confirmed that six people who visited the park have now contracted the virus, up from four suspected cases earlier in the week.

Excerpt from:
Killer virus warning for British tourists who visited Yosemite National Park after two people die

Congo wants the United Nations peacekeepers to "neutralise" a new rebel movement and a force that helped carry out neighbouring Rwanda's 1994 genocide and protect the tense and porous border.

Foreign minister Raymond Tshibanda N'tunga Mulongo also called on the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on those named in a UN report in July that accused high-ranking Rwandan officials of helping to create, arm and support the new M23 rebels within Congo - as well as the rebel movement's leaders.

Mr Mulongo held a news conference after discussions this week with the security council and the panel that wrote the report. Rwanda's foreign minister Louise Mushikiwabo, who has vehemently denied the accusations, was also at UN headquarters this week, meeting the panel and council members.

Congo's mineral-rich east is facing the worst upsurge in fighting in years, which has forced some 280,000 people from their homes.

The fighting escalated in April when army deserters calling themselves the M23 Movement launched a rebellion to demand better pay, better armaments and amnesty from war crimes.

The conflict in the east is a spillover from the 1994 genocide. Hundreds who participated in the mass slaughter escaped into Congo and still fight there.

The M23 rebels are an incarnation of a group of Congolese Tutsi set up to fight Rwandan Hutu rebels in Congo.

Mr Mulongo said that all of Congo's borders were quiet except for the border with Rwanda, and instead of trying to introduce a second foreign force to help bring peace to the country his government wants the security council to beef up the mandate of the 22,000-strong UN peacekeeping force.

He said the government envisaged a special unit being created for a limited period of time - six to nine months - to try to get M23 and the FDLR, or Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda led by Hutus who helped perpetrate Rwanda's 1994 genocide and escaped to Congo, to "simply stop what they're doing".

The rest is here:
'Neutralise' rebels, Congo tells UN