No hantavirus outbreak in Argentina, only isolated cases, says expert

Argentina has seen an increase in hantavirus cases but not an outbreak, an expert told AFP on Wednesday, as infections aboard a cruise ship have provoked a global health scare.

The MV Hondius set sail from Ushuaia in southern Argentina on April 1 and is currently anchored off the coast of Cape Verde after three passengers died, possibly of hantavirus.

The rare respiratory disease is usually spread from infected rodents, typically through urine, droppings and saliva.

Argentina's Health Ministry recorded 42 cases of hantavirus this year, and 101 this epidemiological year, which runs from June to June – almost double the 57 recorded in the same period the previous year.

Biologist, researcher and professor at the National University of Córdoba, Raúl González Ittig, told AFP there was "nothing atypical" about the increase in cases.

"In Argentina there are hantavirus cases every year," he said.

The higher numbers, he said, "are not outbreaks but isolated cases," noting that the El Niño phenomenon brought heavy rains and caused vegetation to grow more, which may in turn have increased Argentina's rodent population.

According to the professor, "there isn't any particular outbreak right now," with the last one in Argentina occurring in southern Chubut Province in 2018, when a rural worker caught the virus and infected over 50 people at a party, which resulted in 15 deaths.

The Andes strain, which is present in the Andean-Patagonian forests, one of Argentina's four endemic regions, was detected among the infected passengers.

But in Tierra del Fuego Province, where Ushuaia is located, "there has never been a single report of hantavirus," González Ittig said, adding that "the chances that they were infected in Ushuaia are very low."

The World Health Organization (WHO) was trying to work out how hantavirus appeared on the ship, the first person who died having developed symptoms on April 6.

The disease has an incubation period that can last up to several weeks, and the movements of the cruise passengers prior to boarding in Ushuaia remain unknown.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has insisted the hantavirus outbreak is not comparable to the Covid pandemic.

"The risk to the rest of the world is low," he told AFP.

– TIMES/AFP