Colorado authorities have logged their first ​confirmed death from hantavirus since 2024, according to a statement on Monday from the Colorado Department of Public Health ​and Environment. Officials noted that this new hantavirus case has been traced to a strain endemic to Colorado, Sin Nombre (Spanish for “nameless”), and not the now widely known Andes strain responsible for infecting at least 11 people onboard the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius and killing three. Unlike the Andes version, which has been primarily recorded in South America, Sin Nombre hantavirus cannot be spread person to person. “Preliminary evidence suggests the infection was acquired by local exposure to rodents,” the state’s public health department spokesperson Hope Shuler wrote in an email, according to The Colorado Sun. “The risk to the general public remains low and the investigation is ongoing.” However, this local strain has, nevertheless, been deadly over the years across America’s desert Southwest, contributing to a total of 121 known hantavirus infections, including 45 deaths, in Colorado and 129 cases, including 54 deaths, in New Mexico from 1993 to 2023. Infamously, New Mexico served as the backdrop to the hantavirus death of Gene Hackman’s wife, Betsy Arakawa, in 2025—an event that precipitated the Oscar-winning actor’s own death as he struggled in isolation with his advanced Alzheimer’s diagnosis that same year.