A Winnebago County resident with a previously suspected case of hantavirus doesn’t have the illness after all, state health officials said Monday.
The Illinois Department of Public Health announced May 12 that the person had a potential case of hantavirus but that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would perform additional testing to confirm if the person had the illness.
That CDC testing did not detect hantavirus, according to the state health department.
With that additional testing, the person is no longer considered to potentially have hantavirus. State health officials said in a statement that the risk of Illinois residents getting hantavirus “remains very low.”
The state health department previously said that the person had no link to a recent outbreak of hantavirus on a cruise ship but that the individual may have caught the illness while cleaning a home with rodent droppings.
Three people have died so far as part of that cruise ship outbreak. Illinois has not been notified of any residents who were on the cruise ship, according to the state health department.
Typically, people catch hantavirus from contact with infected rodents or their droppings, saliva or urine. There are different strains of hantavirus, and the strain on the cruise ship can be spread from person-to-person, unlike the North American strain, according to the state health department.
Illinois has had seven positive cases of hantavirus since 1993, most recently in March 2025. Nationally, there were 890 cases of hantavirus between 1993 and 2023, according to the CDC.
