
Hi! Recently there's been a bunch of posts expressing worries and asking questions about hanta virus in relation to pet rats, so I want to say a few things:
-Your pet rats will not infect you with Hanta. They don't spontaneously generate the disease, so the only way they could have gotten it is via an infected wild rodent, which is safe to assume they haven't been in contact with.
-The strain found on the cruise ship that's in the news currently is the Andes strain, which is primarily carried by pigmy rice rats, not the rattus norvegicus we keep.
-In the history of keeping pet rats, there's only ever been a single case of Hanta being transmitted from the rat to the owner, and as far as I know this was specifically a rat that was rescued from outside. See https://www.dzif.de/en/hantavirus-first-detection-human-infection-transmitted-pet-rat It is more likely that you'll be hit by lightning rather than get Hanta from your rats!