Hantavirus Case Linked To Home Cleaned Out On TLC's 'Hoarders' TV Show

First of all, whoever is volunteering to help clean out homes on TLC’s Hoarders: Buried Alive, you are a better person than most of us, because sorting through piles of stuff/garbage/cats/whathaveyou can’t always be a fun time. Especially for at least one person who has reportedly contracted hantavirus — the same disease that has killed three people who visited Yosemite National Park — after filming a recent episode of the reality TV show in Texas.

The person apparently got hantavirus after working to clean out a local home as part of a 29-person team. All those on the set have been notified that they could have caught it from rodents or their excrement in the house. It can’t be passed from person to person.

Neighbors of the afflicted home aren’t too surprised about the outbreak, after all, it needed the intervention of a reality TV show to get whipped into shape.

“There had been times when it has been clean,” said one neighbor. “And then six months would go by and those weeds are taller than us. And, you know, so yeah, it was bad.”

The community felt for the family that lived there, which is why so many volunteered to work on the house in August. It’s empty now due to the health risk. Meanwhile at Yosemite, the park has warned visitors from other nations as well as the U.S. that they could be at risk for contracting hantavirus if they were at the park this summer. The disease has flu-like symptoms and so far, there’s no cure.

Hantavirus case linked to home featured on TLC’s “Hoarders” [WTVR]

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