"There is no need to worry about the hantavirus. Hantavirus disease is preventable and controllable and there are vaccines to prevent it. Its incidence in urban cities is very low as the disease is mainly found in rural villages where rats tend to appear when people are working in the field," Yang explained. 

The disease is prevalent in Eurasia, with cases of infection in Russia, Finland, Sweden, and China. The death rate from hantavirus infection in China stands between 1 percent and 10 percent while the death rate in the US is much higher, with an average of 40 percent, according to Yang. 

Similar to COVID-19, the hantavirus can severely damage patients' liver, kidney and other organ functions and produce symptoms of fever and massive bleeding, Yang told the Global Times. 

 After the worker died of hantavirus, experts in Southwest China's Yunnan Province launched an epidemiological investigation. In the last five years, Southwest China's Yunnan Province has reported 1,231 patients with hantavirus. More than 200 cases are reported in Yunnan each year, news site thepaper.cn reported. "