El Niño linked rodent hantavirus risk

Large climate anomalies (for example El Niño) can trigger local rodent population booms that dramatically raise the chance of hantavirus spillovers to humans, as shown by the 1991–93 El Niño and the Sin Nombre outbreak; international travel can then export regionally endemic strains (e.g., the Andes strain) to distant populations. The article pairs mechanistic virology (entry pathways and organ targets) with ecological and epidemiological facts (reservoir species, case counts, dates), offering a simple, testable causal chain from climate variability to outbreak risk. — It foregrounds how climate variability plus ecological monitoring should be central to infectious‑disease surveillance and cross‑border public‑health planning.