The national government will send experts to Ushuaia, the Patagonian city from which the cruise ship carrying a hantavirus outbreak set sail, to examine rodents for the “possible presence of the virus,” says Argentina's Health Ministry.
Technical teams will travel to the capital of Tierra del Fuego Province, at the southern tip of Argentina, “to carry out rodent capture and analysis operations in areas linked to the movements of the cases, and to detect the possible presence of the virus in natural reservoirs,” read a statement from the Health Ministry.
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.
It has not been confirmed that the cases recorded on the ship were infected in Argentina, and “Tierra del Fuego has not reported any hantavirus cases since mandatory notification of the disease began in 1996,” concluded the statement.
Nevertheless, Argentina has seen an increase in hantavirus cases but not an outbreak, an expert on Wednesday.
The National 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 Cordoba, Raúl González Ittig, says 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."
According to the professor, "there isn't any particular outbreak right now," with the last one in Argentina occurring in the southern Chubut Province in 2018.
Infected visited Argentina
The two Dutch cruise ship passengers who died of hantavirus had travelled through Chile, Uruguay and Argentina before boarding the MV Hondius, the Health Ministry also confirmed.
A statement from the portfolio said that the husband-and-wife couple arrived in Argentina on November 27, then travelled to Chile and Uruguay before returning to Argentina on March 27 to board the MV Hondius on April 1.
The Andes strain of the virus, which was confirmed in two of the cruise ship passengers, has not been detected in Tierra del Fuego Province, where Ushuaia is situated, since 1996, officials said.
The Andes strain is the only one for which there is evidence of human-to-human transmission.
The husband died onboard the ship on April 11. His body was disembarked in Saint Helena, an island in the south Atlantic.
His wife, who was feeling unwell, also left the ship at Saint Helena. She was later evacuated to a hospital in Johannesburg, where she died.
The body of a German passenger, who also died, is still on the ship.
The WHO said earlier that three people – two crew members and one other person thought to be infected – were evacuated from the vessel, which had been in quarantine off the Cape Verde archipelago.
They were transferred to the Netherlands.
Diagnosis in Bariloche
Elsewhere, health authorities in Bariloche have confirmed that a 45-year-old man is being treated at the city's Ramón Carrillo Hospital in Bariloche after being diagnosed with hantavirus.
The patient was admitted to A&E on Sunday after presenting with symptoms of fever, diarrhoea and body aches. He remained under observation until the virus was detected, after which he was transferred to the Intensive Care Unit.
Authorities have also placed the man's wife and son in preventive isolation.
Health authorities are attempting to determine the source of the infection, as the man visited the northern provinces of Jujuy and Salta a week ago.
Rodrigo Bustamante, Director of Epidemiology at the hospital, spoke to the Río Negro newspaper and stated: “It has been five days since the onset of symptoms and we are entering the most critical period in which patients can become unwell.”
– TIMES/AFP/NA
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