Hantaviruses are rare but potentially severe rodent-borne viruses. In the United States, most cases are associated with exposure to infected rodent urine, droppings, saliva, or contaminated dust. Most hantaviruses in the United States do not spread person-to-person.

The major exception is the Andes virus, which has been documented to spread rarely through close, prolonged contact with a symptomatic person. Andes virus spread is usually limited to those with direct physical contact, prolonged time spent in close or enclosed spaces, and exposure to the sick person's body fluids.

Incubation of Andes Virus
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists the Andes virus incubation as 4 to 42 days, median 18 days.

Signs and Symptoms of the Andes Virus
Signs and symptoms of hantavirus appear 4 to 42 days after exposure. Early symptoms of the virus can include:
•    fatigue
•    fever
•    muscle aches, especially in the large muscle groups like the thighs, hips, back, and sometimes shoulders

About half of all patients also experience:
•    headaches
•    dizziness
•    chills
•    abdominal problems, like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain

Avoid spread of the Andes virus between people by:
•    washing hands frequently
•    avoiding kissing and sexual contact with someone who may have Andes virus
•    avoid sharing drinks, cigarettes, hookah, and vapes with someone who may have Andes virus
•    avoid sharing eating utensils or eating food from the same plate or bowl as someone who may have Andes virus
•    maintaining distance from someone who may have Andes virus

Protection for Law Enforcement Personnel Managing Andes Virus Patients
The Andes version of the hantavirus requires more precautions in use of personal protective equipment (PPE). When the Andes virus or similar are suspected, use an N95 or higher respirator, gown, gloves, and eye protection.

The Hansen PPE chart has been updated and included below.

Standard Precautions when Managing the Public
Use standard precautions for routine interactions.  Consider hantavirus or Andes virus with exposed or infected patients, and upgrade scene safety.  Use masks and full PPE early.  If a person is suspected to be infected with the Andes virus, notify receiving facility and do not expose emergency medical services or hospital personnel or facilities unless they are protected. 

How U.S. Hantavirus Typically Spreads
Hantaviruses that are not the Andes version are found in the United States., and most can cause hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS), a potentially serious disease that can cause damage to the lungs. Non-HPS hantavirus infection can also occur, where patients experience non-specific viral symptoms, but no cardio-pulmonary symptoms. Early symptoms can look like the flu.

Each hantavirus has one primary rodent that carries the disease. The most common hantavirus in the United States is spread by the deer mouse. Cases most often occur in rural areas where forests, fields, and farms offer habitats for rodents. The animals can get into homes and barns, where they may leave urine or feces. Dogs and cats in the United States are not known to become infected with hantavirus, but pets may bring infected rodents to people or into homes.

People can contract hantavirus if they have contact with urine, feces or saliva of a rodent carrying the virus. This can occur when people:
•    aerosolize contaminated dust
•    breathe in hantavirus-contaminated air when cleaning up after rodents
•    touch contaminated objects and then touch their nose, mouth, or eyes
•    are bitten or scratched by an infected rodent
•    eat food contaminated with hantavirus

Reducing Risk of Hantavirus 
The overall risk to the U.S. public and travelers remains extremely low. If you think you had contact with a person with Andes virus and are experiencing symptoms, contact a medical professional or your state or local health department immediately. For those with facility responsibilities, take the following precautions:
•    Keep police stations and corrections facilities free of rodents.
•    Do not sweep, vacuum, or blow rodent droppings in stations.
•    Where droppings are found, ventilate the area well; wet the droppings with disinfectant; and use gloves and respiratory protection when collecting and removing.

Disinfection Practices
Areas and materials exposed to the Andes virus should be disinfected using EPA-registered disinfectant products effective against enveloped viruses, such as products included on EPA List N. This includes Clorox Healthcare Hydrogen Peroxide Cleaner Disinfectant Wipes (EPA Reg. No. 67619-25). These wipes are EPA-registered health care disinfectants and are approved for safe use on law enforcement equipment and vehicles.

Testing for Suspected Hantavirus Illness
Persons who are suspected of having a hantavirus in the United Sates undergo specific testing of blood and other body fluids. Those who have symptoms and a known exposure to the Andes virus are tested in a similar way.

Treatment for Hantavirus Illness
There is no specific antiviral treatment or vaccine for the Andes virus currently available. Symptoms may develop rapidly. Early medical care is critical with care centered on managing symptoms.

Guidance may change as more knowledge of this virus is gained. Consult the CDC, local health departments, and medical personnel for timely updates.

The difference between a good response and a great one often starts before the first unit ever rolls.

Picture a vehicle crash on a highway overpass. Before the first 9-1-1 call is received, structured crash data is already flowing into the Emergency Communications Center: incident location, airbags deployed, number of occupants, and injury severity prediction. Is this a minor fender-bender or a high-severity event? Are there hazards on scene? Is the location precise? Answering these questions earlier changes everything about how a  response unfolds.

This is not a future-state concept. It is what Advanced Automatic Collision Notification (AACN) is making possible right now. 

At Intrado, we have spent decades focused on the 9-1-1 ecosystem. As we head to Fort Worth for the 2026 IACP Technology Conference, one thing is clear: as the Emergency Communications Center evolves, law enforcement gains greater advantages: earlier awareness, richer information, and a stronger foundation for every response. 

The ECC Is Where the Information Advantage Begins

The modern ECC is more than an answering point. It is an information hub.

For law enforcement, one of the biggest challenges in emergency response is uncertainty. Officers make split-second decisions with incomplete information, often en route to dynamic and potentially dangerous scenes.

AACN gives telecommunicators critical crash data at the outset of an incident, sometimes before a traditional 9-1-1 call is even established. Dispatchers build the incident faster. Officers receive better intelligence before they arrive. Approach decisions, scene safety, resource coordination: all of it benefits when the picture comes into focus sooner.

AACN is not just improving 9-1-1 intake. It is improving the quality of intelligence law 
enforcement receives before the first unit reaches the scene.

9-1-1, RTCCs, and RTICs: The Same Information Chain

The relationship between 9-1-1 and law enforcement does not end at dispatch. In many communities, ECCs work closely with Real-Time Crime Centers and Real-Time Information Centers, and when that partnership functions well, it creates a qualitatively different operational picture.

Think of it as layered intelligence. The ECC serves as the front door: telecommunicators gather and validate initial incident details, establishing what is happening and where. RTCCs and RTICs expand that picture, pairing ECC-sourced information with camera feeds, license plate reader data, historical call patterns, and BOLO-related intelligence.

A telecommunicator confirming a vehicle description from a 9-1-1 caller, paired with an RTCC analyst pulling camera coverage along that route, is a fundamentally different capability than either function working alone. Officers arriving with that level of awareness are better positioned to make sound decisions under pressure.

In a well-integrated system, the ECC anchors the real-time intelligence picture that law enforcement depends on.

#HumanInTheLoop: AI Should Strengthen the Human Decision-Maker

Law enforcement agencies have legitimate reasons to approach AI carefully. Questions around bias, transparency, accountability, and evidentiary integrity are not abstractions, they are operational and legal realities agencies navigate every day.

At Intrado, our position is straightforward: AI in public safety must support people, not replace them. The human stays in the loop. That is not a marketing posture, it is a design principle.

In the 9-1-1 environment, AI helps telecommunicators process information faster and surface what matters most. Real-time translation bridges language barriers without delay. Automated transcription creates a time-stamped record as the incident unfolds. Call summarization elevates critical details: location, incident type, evolving circumstances, so dispatchers move faster and officers receive cleaner dispatch notes.

None of that removes the judgment of a trained telecommunicator. It enhances it.

As Next Generation 9-1-1 capabilities expand, Incident-Related Imagery (caller-submitted photos and video) adds another dimension. For law enforcement, how that media is received, logged, and preserved inside the ECC has direct relevance to chain of custody and evidentiary integrity. AI-assisted image analysis may accelerate awareness, but human review and clear policy frameworks are essential. This is an area where 9-1-1 and law enforcement need to be thinking together.

Better Triage Means Better Deployment

High call volume, staffing strain, limited resources; every agency knows this reality. A non emergency AI agent can help identify calls better suited for online reporting, follow-up services, or community resources. That is not a reduction in service. It is smarter allocation of it.

For law enforcement, the result is direct: officers spend less time on calls that could be handled through other channels, and more time where their presence is genuinely needed.

Come Talk With Us in Fort Worth

Law enforcement, emergency communications, and RTCC and RTIC operations are tightly connected parts of the same response ecosystem. What happens at the front end shapes everything that follows. When we improve crash intelligence, strengthen the ECC-to-RTCC handoff, and apply AI responsibly, we give officers a clearer picture before they arrive and a stronger foundation for what comes next.

Communities expect positive outcomes in emergency situations, and Intrado is here to support them. With 45 years of experience, we save lives and protect communities by preparing for, responding to, and recovering from critical events. Our innovative and reliable technology connects help to those in need.

As a global leader in emergency communication services, we partner with first responders to ensure the right help reaches the right place quickly. Always there in an emergency, we are Intrado.

We look forward to connecting with you in Ft. Worth!

Where agentic AI is doing real work for understaffed investigations units, and what to insist on before you buy. 

Ask a working investigator how many open cases they're carrying and the answer is usually somewhere around twenty. The rhythm is familiar to anyone who's done the job: work a case until you hit a wall (a subpoena in flight, lab results pending, a witness who won't call back), then shelve it and pick up the next one. The walls aren't the problem. The context-switching tax is. Every time an investigator picks a case back up, they re-read their notes and try to remember where they left off.  

Meanwhile, digital evidence volumes keep climbing, and the pattern-level insights that clear cases stay locked inside data silos no one has time to stitch together. The problem isn't access. It involves reconciling a suspect's alias across systems, walking their associates out two degrees, and cross-referencing communications. And cases go cold not because investigators missed something, but because they ran out of hours.

AI isn't going to hire anyone. But a particular kind of AI, often called "agentic" or "multi-agent," can do real work on behalf of the investigators you already have, precisely in the gaps where cases go cold waiting for attention.

What "multi-agent" actually means

Rather than one general-purpose chatbot, a multi-agent system is a team of specialized AI components working under an orchestrator. Picture your most capable analyst who can delegate to an army of equally capable analysts: one sub-agent pulls records, another monitors open sources, another reads through case files. The orchestrator synthesizes what comes back into a structured, cited briefing. Humans stay in the loop at every consequential step. Done right, the output doesn't look like a magic answer. It looks like the work product of a careful analyst: sourced, graded for confidence, and ready for an investigator to verify and act on.

Here are three places this pattern is starting to earn its keep in law enforcement.

1. Connecting the dots across siloed systems

Most of what an investigator needs is scattered across the agency's own systems: RMS, CAD, jail bookings, field interviews, CCTV and other video, regional intel platforms, plus a subject's open-source footprint. Increasingly, the dominant category of evidence isn't physical. Warrant-based digital evidence (call detail records, tower dumps, phone extractions, etc.) has overtaken traditional forensics in importance, and it arrives with enough noise that the problem isn't finding a needle in a haystack. It's finding that needle while buried underneath the haystack.

The bottleneck isn't access. It's time. Reconciling an alias across five systems, cross-referencing communications across a dozen devices, walking a suspect's associates out two or three degrees is hours of work per subject, which is why pattern-level insight so often arrives after the arrest rather than before.

A multi-agent setup handles this in parallel. Specialized sub-agents query each source simultaneously. An orchestrator reconciles entities (same person, different spellings; same vehicle, different plates), and a human reviews a consolidated picture with every claim cited back to its source. The use cases that benefit most:

• Gang and organized-crime intelligence, where relationships matter more than any single incident
• Prolific-offender tracking, where patterns across low-level contacts often predict escalation
• Serial and pattern crimes, where the signal is in the aggregation

The investigator's job shifts from assembly to judgment, where it belongs.

2. Cases that keep moving. Knowledge that doesn't walk out the door.

Agencies are losing senior officers to retirement faster than they can replace them. A brief handoff, a few hours with a case file, a conversation over coffee, can't transfer what a veteran detective carries in their head: the mental library of what-to-do-when, built over twenty years, almost none of it written down.

This is the quieter crisis. And some would argue it matters more than throughput.

A system trained not just on investigative practice but on continued interaction with your own senior investigators converts that expertise into something a junior investigator can actually use: a partner that surfaces the next logical step, flags what the veteran would have noticed, and explains why. The rookie doesn't become an expert overnight. But they operate closer to one from day one.

The productivity argument for AI gets made constantly. The workforce continuity argument doesn't get made nearly enough. For agencies watching their most experienced people walk out the door, tools that help junior investigators operate closer to their senior colleagues aren't just a productivity gain. They're a hedge against a workforce crisis.

3. Building the case file, not just finding leads

The volume of material attached to any given case has exploded: body-camera transcripts, interview recordings, warrant returns, phone extractions, and corroborating open-source material. Sub-agents can extract entities and events from each source type, reconcile timelines, surface contradictions between statements, and produce a structured summary with every claim cited and confidence-graded. A human investigator reviews and owns the output.

Strong applications:

• First-pass case-file summaries to orient a supervisor or a new investigator picking up a case
• Cold-case revisit, where running new tools and open-source corroboration against old files regularly surfaces new connections
• Prosecutable-package preparation, where the discipline of citation and confidence grading pays dividends under discovery

The goal isn't speed for its own sake. It's moving investigator time from reading to interviewing.

The Non-Negotiables

Any chief evaluating tools in this space should insist on four things:

1. Every claim cited. If the system can't tell you where a fact came from, it shouldn't be in the brief.
2. Confidence grading at the claim level. Investigators already think in degrees of certainty. The tool should too.
3. Human in the loop on every consequential decision. Agents assemble; humans decide.
4. An audit trail that survives discovery. If the workflow can't be defended in court, it doesn't belong in an investigation.

At Rilian, we've spent years building multi-agent systems for national-security work, where these four properties aren't optional. The mission is different. The standards are the same.

Mike Joy is a retired NYPD Captain and leads the Product team at Rilian.

Law enforcement agencies are under pressure to improve outcomes with limited staffing, while the volume and complexity of information continue to grow. Calls, video, vehicle data, and records all exist, but they rarely come together when they are needed most. At the same time, artificial intelligence (AI) is entering the conversation. Chiefs see the potential, but many hesitate because they are unsure how it fits into real workflows or what risks it introduces. The question is not whether AI can help. It is whether it can be applied in a way that works with how agencies already operate.

Why AI Feels Risky

For many leaders, the hesitation is not about the technology itself. It comes down to control, risk, and flexibility.

• Control: Officers are responsible for decisions in high-stakes situations. Any system that appears to replace judgment raises concern.
• Risk: Leaders need to stand behind how tools are used in court and in public. Systems that are unclear or difficult to review create exposure.
• Flexibility: Many AI solutions require agencies to adopt new systems or commit to a single vendor, even though most departments already rely on multiple tools.

‍AI should not force tradeoffs like these. It should fit into the environment agencies already have, while meaningfully advancing the work being done.

The Real Problem Isn’t AI

Most agencies do not have a technology problem. They have a connection problem.

Information is fragmented across:

• 911 Calls
• Radio Traffic
• Video Systems
• Vehicle Data
• Records Systems

That fragmentation creates delays at every stage.

• During a call, officers are dispatched before they fully understand what they are walking into.
• During response, teams switch between systems to build context.
• During investigation, detectives spend hours gathering information that should already be connected.

The result is slower response, longer case timelines, missed connections, and more strain on already limited staff.

These challenges point to a broader question: where can AI make a practical difference without disrupting how agencies already work.

How AI Can Support Workflows

AI becomes useful when it connects these gaps. Not by replacing systems, but by making them work together. That shows up in three practical ways:

• Surface information earlier so officers arrive with context, not questions.
• Reduce manual work so investigators spend less time searching.
• Support decision making without taking authority away from officers.

This is not a new workflow. It is the same work, without the delay.

What This Looks Like in Practice

AI only matters if it improves real operations. That impact is clearest across 911, response, and investigations.

911 and Dispatch

When a call comes in, the first minutes matter. Today, there is often a gap between when a call is answered and when officers understand the situation.  

Tools like Flock911 close that gap by delivering live caller audio, transcripts, and location directly to officers and RTCC teams as the call unfolds. Officers hear tone, context, and detail before arrival, not after.

Patrol and Live Operations

During response, teams need a shared understanding of what is happening. That context often sits across multiple systems.

FlockOS brings those systems together into one operational view so patrol, RTCC, and command staff can coordinate in real time. Instead of switching between tools, teams see what is happening as it unfolds and respond with greater clarity.

Investigations

After the scene, speed depends on how quickly teams can build context.

• Flock Nova allows investigators to search across records, dispatch data, video, and other sources in one place, reducing the time it takes to gather information.
• Flock FreeForm enables teams to find vehicles or people using simple descriptions, helping them locate relevant footage without relying on rigid filters.

Together, this reduces manual work and helps investigators move from lead to context much faster.

Agencies are using this approach to:

• Verify leads in minutes instead of days.
• Reduce time spent across multiple systems.
• Move cases forward without manual handoffs‍.

What to Look for in AI

Not all AI solutions are built for real workflows. When evaluation options, many agencies focus on a few key considerations.

• Works with your existing systems.
  • AI should connect your current tools, not replace them.
• Keeps officers in control.  
  • Technology supports decisions. It does not make them.
• Provides clear accountability.  
  • Every action can be reviewed and understood.
• Improves real operations.
  • Less manual work, and faster access to context.

‍

What Agencies Are Seeing

When systems are connected, the impact is measurable. Agencies have report significant gains with faster investigative workflows and time saved during searches.

These outcomes come from improving how work gets done, not adding new layers of complexity.

A Practical Way to Get Started

Most agencies are not looking for a full transformation. They are looking for a practical starting point. That usually begins with a simple question:

Where is time being lost today?

From there, agencies can:

• Identify the systems involved in that workflow.
• Connect those systems to reduce manual work.
• Expand to additional workflows over time.

This approach allows teams to see results quickly without disrupting operations.