Two MV Hondius passengers that were killed by hantavirus likely contracted it while bird-watching in Argentina – then brought it on board the now-stranded cruise liner, according to investigators.
Argentine officials now believe a Dutch couple that succumbed to the virus last month picked it up from rodents while visiting a landfill during a bird-watching tour in the city of Ushuaia in mid-March, they told the Associated Press Wednesday.
Health officials think that the two MV Hondius passengers killed by hantavirus likely contracted it while bird-watching in Argentina. AP They then boarded the MV Hondius, which departed on its 35-day-long expedition trip from the Argentine port on March 20.
The 70-year-old Dutch man began feeling sick on April 6, according to the cruise liner’s operating company, Oceanwide Expeditions, with a fever, headache, abdominal pain and diarrhea.
He developed acute respiratory distress and died on April 11, though his death wasn’t linked to the rare hantavirus until weeks later.
The man’s body remained onboard for the next two weeks, during which his wife fell ill.
A suspected hantavirus patient is being hauled off the stricken MV Hondius cruise ship in head-to-toe protective gear, on a gurney. @DrTedros/X On April 25, she traveled by plane with her husband’s body to South Africa, where she died in a Johannesburg hospital.
Authorities previously said that Ushuaia and the surrounding province of Tierra del Fuego had never recorded a case of the hantavirus.
