The lethal hantavirus native to South America is under scrutiny by medical researchers, who doubt that the cruise-ship cases in April originated from a landfill in Ushuaia, Argentina, as originally conjectured. For one thing, long-tailed pygmy rice rats, the species that carries highly contagious Andes hantavirus, were not trapped at the landfill. What has turned up could lengthen quarantine periods for those exposed, the journal Science reported on June 11.
The Dutch couple who first became ill aboard the cruise ship M/V Hondius had traveled through South America for four months. Their route included the landfill in Ushuaia, the town where they boarded the ship, but also an area along the Argentina and Chile border. Sequences of the virus from Hondius patients matched closely to infections in 2018 from Neuquén province, scientists at Argentina’s National Institute of Infectious Diseases determined. Across the border in Chile, a PhD student at the University of Development, Lissette Ulloa-Zepeda, and her fellow researchers published surveillance results in May from genetic sequencing of Andes hantavirus samples from 2013. They matched even more closely.
The likely location of the Hondius infections points to this border region as the Dutch couple had traveled there in early February. But a 60-day incubation period would be “unprecedentedly long” wrote Kai Kupferschmidt in the Science article. The quarantine period for Andes hantavirus, based on how long it takes for symptoms of illness to appear, is currently about 42 days.