Ms Shaina Montiel was just five and being brought to an ambulance when her mother said: “We’re going to see you, but there’s a possibility that you might wake up and be in heaven.”
She had just been diagnosed with hantavirus at a hospital, and needed to get to a children’s hospital for further monitoring and supportive care immediately, she said in a recent interview with USA Today.
Now 38, Ms Montiel said her mother still cries when thinking about her experience with the virus, which has been making international headlines over the past week, with an outbreak on board the MV Hondius cruise ship killing three people.
The deceased are a Dutch couple and a German national. Other passengers have fallen sick with the disease, which usually spreads among rodents.
People infected by hantavirus strains can get a range of illnesses, including the hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome, a severe respiratory illness that has a high fatality rate of 20 per cent to 40 per cent, according to the World Health Organization.
People wearing protective suits walking toward the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship MV Hondius docked in the port of Granadilla de Abona on the Spanish island of Tenerife on May 11, 2026.
PHOTO: AFP
Human-to-human transmission of the virus is rare and suspected only for the Andes strain.
Ms Montiel said she had felt sick for about a week, vomiting frequently and getting abdominal pain, she told USA Today. She added that she felt so tired that she could no longer walk, and even wet her bed one night with blood, a result of haemorrhaging and bloody diarrhoea, caused by the virus.
Doctors told her family it was just the flu, but her symptoms got worse and the antibiotics she had been prescribed did little to help.
Her parents later took her to a different hospital, which led to her diagnosis and subsequent transfer to a children’s hospital via ambulance.
Her body was swollen and she had a painful rash.
As there was no treatment for the virus, doctors could only provide supportive care, and Ms Montiel was hospitalised for a week before she felt normal again.
Another hantavirus survivor, Mr Lorne Warburton, described his ordeal as “torture” and “hell on earth”.
The Canadian, who fell ill in March 2023, told BBC Outside Source that he first experienced Covid-like symptoms, including body aches, chronic headache and fatigue.
He added that his symptoms developed quickly, and that he perspired profusely and could not breathe.
He was eventually diagnosed with hantavirus, after being connected to a life support machine, and spent three weeks in hospital.
It took Mr Warburton about 18 months after he was discharged to regain his strength fully.
German Christian Ege, who fell ill in May 2019, said he had a stomach flu for three days, as well as vomiting and dizziness.
He told the BBC that he was given a blood test and was taken to hospital.
Mr Ege said he suffered kidney failure and sepsis, which he described as the most worrying part of his illness, but added that his kidneys eventually recovered.
He recovered after four months, but added that the dialysis process was “hard work for the whole body”.
Ms Montiel contracted the virus during an outbreak in the region where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet, according to ABC News, while Mr Warburton believes he caught it from mouse droppings after shaking a rug in his attic.
For Mr Ege, a positive sample was found in his garden, according to BBC, with his son having found a dead mouse there days earlier.