Agency Kept Busy by Fear of Hantavirus : Disease: Irvine man’s illness, presence of deer mice in county lead callers to jam phone lines of Vector Control District. Officials halt surveys of rodent populations.

Even as hundreds of anxious callers jam telephone lines at the Orange County Vector Control District seeking information on the deadly hantavirus, the agency has temporarily halted field surveys of rodent populations until officials can devise a way to protect inspectors from contracting the airborne virus.

The move came after the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and the California Department of Health Services warned local agencies during the past week to cease trapping rodents until new safety equipment standards can be set.

No cases of the often fatal disease have been linked to rodents in Orange County, but county vector ecologist Jim Webb said the presence of deer mice in the area’s foothills and canyons has generated a deluge of calls.

“People read the paper and they know that these mice are in the area and they put two and two together, and they get a little nervous,” Webb said. Their apprehension may have been heightened by news that an Orange County man is likely to be added to the list of people who contracted the disease while traveling in the desert Southwest.

George Wolff, 64, of Irvine is still awaiting test results from federal laboratories in Atlanta to determine whether he is indeed among the survivors of the virus, which Webb said may have a fatality rate as high as 75%.

“I lost 27 pounds and I couldn’t walk,” Wolff said Wednesday, recounting the ailment that baffled doctors until Wolff saw a newspaper article about the hantavirus and told his doctor he had been at Kirkland Air Force Base in Albuquerque in March.

“I never saw any mice,” Wolff said Wednesday. “I must have picked it up from the wind blowing across an open field. It’s scary.”

As many as 31 people in the Southwestern United States--including one in California--are believed to have died from the illness, which strikes with flu-like symptoms that rapidly worsen. The spread of the virus has been linked to deer mice droppings, which apparently spread the virus after decaying into airborne dust.

“We have no reason to believe that we have the virus here in Orange County, but we will continue monitoring” area rodents, Webb said. However, Webb said, the field study portion of that monitoring has been stalled until federal and state officials develop a safe method to approach and test the small mammals.

Because the virus is believed to be transmitted via the air, Webb said those precautions could include tactics usually reserved for handling hazardous materials.

“It could mean we go out there in the field looking like a spaceman,” Webb said. Safety measures “may not be that stringent, but you always have to consider the worst-case scenario.”

Orange County is the only Southern California county that routinely traps and tests mice, Webb said. The testing is part of a tracking program begun in 1989 after a case of Lyme disease linked to rodents was diagnosed in Newport Beach.

While field studies of rodents will be put on hold, Ken Townzen, state supervising public health biologist, said stored batches of rodent blood samples collected during recent government and university surveys should sustain the investigation of the hantavirus.

“There’s a lot of information available without having to risk trapping rodents at this time,” Townzen said. “And if the time comes when we need to go out and trap more, we’ll have some procedures in place to do it safely.”

Townzen said a contingent of officials from the Centers for Disease Control are expected to arrive from the East Coast soon to train his staff on procedures related to studying and curbing the hantavirus. “They have a lot more information then we do in regard to precautions.”

In the meantime, county vector control and health offices have been inundated with calls seeking information about deer mice and the mysterious virus that lab technicians have not yet even been able to isolate, Webb said.

Fielding a barrage of calls has become something of a recent tradition for the vector control staff, which received an unexpected public backlash to a $2 increase in its annual pest control fees. About 4,000 letters decrying the hike have also been sent to the usually low-profile agency.

In recent days, taxpayer ire has been replaced by the flurry of concerned Orange County residents inquiring about ways to protect themselves and checking on rumors of hantavirus cases here, Webb said.

County epidemiologist Hildy Meyers said Wednesday that no test results had been released on a lung tissue sample taken from Irvine resident Wolff, suspected of having contracted the hantavirus while visiting New Mexico earlier this year. Meyers said the tests, being performed by the CDC, were a high priority, but also involved time-consuming procedures.

Wolff was beset in early April by a high fever, coughing and body aches which defied antibiotics prescribed by his physician, Dr. Gregory Robertson. As Wolff’s fever worsened, he became increasingly disoriented and was admitted to Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach.

An outbreak of the virus in New Mexico and the Four Corners region earlier in the year is blamed for 15 confirmed deaths, mostly among the Navajo population. Authorities suspect the virus may be responsible for 16 additional fatalities.

Robertson said state and federal officials have a “high level of confidence” that Wolff’s illness will be proven to be hantavirus. It is less certain, however, that doctors will able to identify why Wolff fared so well against the infection.

“If only I knew,” said Robertson, who listed steroid treatments and good luck as two of the most likely reasons. Robertson said Wolff shows no lingering effects of the virus.

The disease, which is known formally as hantavirus associated respiratory distress syndrome, has been linked to deaths in California, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Texas, health officials said.

The first confirmed California case was the September, 1992, death of an unidentified 50-year-old Santa Barbara County ranch hand who officials said often collected mice and other rodents to feed to his cats.

A UC San Diego student was the second California fatality. Jeanne Messier, 27, died July 27 of lung failure after apparently contracting the hantavirus while while working at a nature reserve in Mammoth Lakes in the Eastern Sierra.

Deer mice, which have grown in number since the winter’s heavy rains and snow, have been found in all 58 California counties. While the rodents, known by scientists as Peromyscus maniculatus, are carriers of the virus, they do not suffer any ill effects.

The state Department of Health Services recommended in an advisory Tuesday that homes with deer mice infestation be cleaned thoroughly of any accumulated droppings. The droppings should be misted from above with a mixture of one part household bleach and three parts water.

After the mist has made the droppings damp but not soaked, they should be wiped up and placed into a double plastic bag before disposal. Dry droppings should not be swept or handled, the advisory states, because of dust inhalation dangers. Dust masks and rubber gloves are also recommended.