90-Second Read: Birders push back on Hantavirus fears tied to Argentine city

The World Health Organization has said the first person with a confirmed case may have been exposed to rodents, which can carry Hantavirus, while on a birding trip. The Andes variant of Hantavirus is the only strain that can be transmitted from person to person, though health officials have reiterated that it is not Covid and does not spread like the pandemic virus. On Friday, Juan Petrina, the province of Tierra del Fuego's environmental health and epidemiology director, showed reporters a graph of Hantavirus cases in the area and said that it was unlikely the first cases originated there. Last week, The Associated Press, citing two Argentine officials investigating the origins of the outbreak, said the government's leading hypothesis was that the couple contracted the virus while bird-watching in Ushuaia and may have been exposed to rodents at the city's landfill.

Daniels said he guided some of the ship's birding passengers at the landfill in the days before it left for multiple South Atlantic destinations, though he said the couple that died was not among them. Hantavirus is typically contracted through contact with the urine, droppings or saliva of infected rodents, like rats and mice. Basanth Sadasivan, 28, who was on board the MV Hondius for a 22-day cruise in February, said the outbreak came as a surprise to him given the ship's hygiene measures. Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.

Now, bird-watching may be at the epicenter of the outbreak on board the MV Hondius, in which three people have died and five others were sickened. The landfill theory made some birding enthusiasts uneasy and prompted some authorities, locals and others to defend Ushuaia, a city of nearly 85,000 that draws tourists to its Antarctic cruise ships and abundant, watchworthy bird population. That outbreak, in Patagonian Argentina's Chubut province, petered out after 34 documented infections and 11 deaths. The definitive origin of the first infection has not been identified, and epidemiological investigations are underway, the WHO has said.

That trip "included visits to sites where the species of rat that is known to carry Andes virus was present," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a Thursday briefing. The virus identified on board the Hondius is "near identical with the strain that recently caused a well-documented human-to-human outbreak in Argentina in 2018/19," Spyros Lytras, an evolutionary virologist, said by email. Attempts to contact the city of Ushuaia by email were not successful.