IRMA, Alta. – To most farmers, mice are part of every day life.
Randy Newton was like most farmers. He took for granted the mice around his central Alberta farm. They were just pests to live with when he cleaned out his combine each fall or his grain bins in the summer.
He took them for granted until he almost died from the deadly hantavirus disease three years ago. Once a person gets a whiff of disease-infected urine or feces of deer mice and contracts the virus, there is only a 50 percent chance of living.
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Newton survived, but he’s scared now because 38 percent of the deer mice tested on his farm this year were positive for the hantavirus. This summer he has caught 10 mice in his trailer home and more than twice that around the farm. With the almost plague-like number of mice this year he’s worried about his family’s safety.
He should be.
There is a direct correlation between the number of deer mice and the number of hantavirus cases, said Dr. Harvey Artsob, head of zoonotic diseases for the Laboratory Centre for Disease Control with Health Canada in Ottawa.
There are also higher numbers of cases reported in the harvest season when farmers spend more time in fields.
So far this year, there have been four cases of hantavirus: three in Alberta and one in Ontario.
“The scary part is the infection rate is so high,” said Newton sitting at his parents’ kitchen table.
Twice normal rate
No one knows why the percentage of deer mice infected with the virus is so high around the small community. So far four people within a 50 kilometre radius of the farm have come down with the disease, and one woman died.
Alberta has more than double the number of hantavirus cases of any other province.
Because of the unusually high number of mice this year, public health inspector Gordon Corcoran set up traps around the farm and the area to test the mice. He came up with startling results.
Of the deer mice caught on the Newton’s farm, 24 percent captured near the house tested positive and 48 percent caught around the granaries tested positive.
While the hantavirus is relatively rare, farmers are at higher risk than most because of their almost daily contact with mice, he said.
“Farmers are the highest risk group because of the kind of work they do,” said Corcoran, with the East Central Regional Health Authority in Wainwright, Alta.
No one knows why Alberta, especially the east-central area, seems to have more deer mice testing positive for the disease. Corcoran thinks the amount of shrub brush in the parkland area may be the ideal environment for deer mice, the only type of mouse in Canada known to carry hantavirus.
Artsob said deer mice carrying the virus have been found from Vancouver Island to Newfoundland, but more people living in western North America have contracted the disease than those in the east. No one is sure why.
“Maybe the virus out there (West) is more virulent,” said Artsob.
Carried in the air
After Newton’s brush with death, he and his family vowed to raise people’s awareness. Precautions like wearing a good face mask and spraying a mice-infected area with a strong soap and water solution will almost eliminate the chance of contracting the disease. The water reduces dust that carries it.
As a hangover from his illness, Newton harbors a near paranoia of cleaning the combine or old granaries. And he no longer leaves his grain truck parked in the field during combining since mice found in the truck tested positive.
Newton hopes by letting people know the high levels of infection of deer mice, more farmers will take extra precautions.
“It’s all attitude. I was pretty ignorant. I never thought it would happen to me, but it did,” said Newton.
