Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 21, 1994                   TAG: 9412210075
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-8   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: HOLLYBROOK                                LENGTH: Medium

HIKERS GET COMMON-SENSE ADVICE ON AVOIDING RARE DISEASE|

Mike Dawson ambled across two logs that served as a bridge over the creek and, after getting his bearings from an Appalachian Trail guide, made his way along the paint-blazed trees to the Wapiti Shelter on the Giles-Bland county line.

Dawson, a field representative for the Appalachian Trail Conference, was retracing steps of an Australian tourist who became infected with a deadly lung infection somewhere along the trail in Virginia.

On this day last week, though, Dawson was more concerned about what was in the clouds above him than the deer mice on the ground that can carry the hantavirus.

``A hiker is more likely to get hit by lightning than contract the hantavirus,'' Dawson said. ``A hiker is more likely to be bitten by a rabid animal, and I've never even heard of that on the trail.''

But two weeks earlier, health department sanitarians and Forest Service workers wearing protective clothing and masks collected trapped mice at the shelter and other stopovers noted in the unidentified Australian's diary.

They hope blood and organ samples sent to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta will give investigators clues about where on the 541 miles of the trail in Virginia that he became infected.

An outbreak of the hantavirus killed 40 people in the Southwest last year and 98 people have been infected nationwide. Half of them died. But there have been only three other cases east of the Mississippi - in Louisiana, Florida and Rhode Island.

The 61-year-old Australian man was one of about 1,200 people a year who attempt to walk the entire 2,150 miles of the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. He left the trek after having a fever, diarrhea and other flu symptoms for four days, and he was hospitalized for severe respiratory and circulatory problems for nearly a month before recovering.

To illustrate the rarity of the disease, Appalachian Trail Conference director Brian King points out that the man was traveling with a pack of ``thru hikers.'' None of them - or anyone else on the trail since then - has been infected with the hantavirus.

``There were at least 20 a day in front of him and 20 behind,'' King said. ``There were three to four people he regularly stayed with. It's got to be pretty hard to catch this thing.''

Nevertheless, the hantavirus will be added to the Appalachian Trail risk list in the organization's guides - along with lightning, water contamination, hypothermia and animal bites.

``It's a serious and lethal disease, but it doesn't seem too tough to avoid contamination,'' King said. ``Basic sanitation takes care of the problem.''

The virus is contained in mice droppings, urine and saliva and can become airborne. Hikers just need to avoid touching or sleeping on top of mice feces or stirring up dust in an enclosed, mouse infested area, King said.

The Appalachian Trail Conference has notified the 22,000 members of its clubs that help maintain the trail and shelters.

No hiker has called the Virginia chapter and only one person has called the main office in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., to express concern about the hantavirus. But King said hikers have their own ``grape vine'' and rumors may be overstating the problem.

While sanitary practices are common sense and should be used even if there was no danger of a deadly virus, Dawson said ``there's nothing you can do about the mouse population. It is endemic.''

At the Wapiti Shelter, like most along the Appalachian Trail, hikers have learned how suspend their food supplies above the floor by tying them to strings hung from the roof. A simple trick involving small, empty cans tied along the string foils the mice from shimmying along the string to the food.

Although the trail clubs maintain the shelters, the hikers are supposed to keep it clean. There is a well-worn broom in the corner. The shelters generally have only three sides and that eliminates the danger of the virus settling into the dust of enclosed structures, Dawson said.

``The risks are insignificant to most hikers,'' Dawson said. ``These aren't the type of people who afraid of being eaten by lions and tigers and bears in the woods.''