What is the origin of the hantavirus outbreak?: Argentina reconstructs the journey of the first infected

BarcelonaWhile the hantavirus-affected cruise ship is already traveling towards the Canary Islands, the unknowns about the origin of the outbreak remain open. The World Health Organization (WHO) has dismissed the possibility that the infection was caused by the presence of rodents on board the vessel, so the most probable hypothesis at this point is that the first two fatalities, a Dutch couple, had contracted the virus before boarding the ship and that, once there, they had infected other passengers. Argentina, from where the cruise ship departed, has reconstructed the journey of the man and woman before embarking on the sea voyage. In the last four months, they had been in a large part of this country, but also in Chile and Uruguay.

The strain responsible for the outbreak is the one circulating in the Andes, which according to the Argentine Ministry of Health has only been detected in the provinces of Chubut, Río Negro, and Neuquén, as well as in southern Chile. So far, no cases associated with the cruise ship outbreak have been identified in the country, and Argentine technical teams will travel to Ushuaia to capture and analyze rodents with the aim of detecting the possible presence of the virus in natural reservoirs. Argentina will also send the ARN of the Andes strain and technical material to laboratories in Spain, Senegal, South Africa, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom to be able to perform approximately 2,500 diagnostic tests.

Itinerary

Meanwhile, authorities continue to trace the Dutch couple's itinerary to try to determine the origin of the outbreak. According to the Argentine Ministry of Health, the two tourists arrived in Argentina on November 27 of last year and traveled around the country by car for 40 days, before crossing to Chile on January 7 of this year. Once there, they continued the journey by car for another 24 days. They returned to Argentina at the end of January to visit the province of Neuquén, where other cases of hantavirus have already been detected, and 12 days later they returned to Chile. From there they crossed to the Argentine province of Mendoza, to the west, to make a 20-day journey to the province of Misiones, which borders Brazil and Paraguay.

Finally, on March 13, they crossed by land to Uruguay and on March 27, they returned to Argentina to head to the city of Ushuaia, in the province of Tierra del Fuego, from where the cruise ship set sail on April 1. The first passenger to show symptoms was a 70-year-old man, who died on the British island of Saint Helena, while his wife, 69, died in South Africa, from where she was going to fly to the Netherlands.