‘Almost zero’ chance Dutch man got hantavirus in Argentine city: official

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USHUAIA, Argentina -- There is an “almost zero” chance that the Dutch man linked to the hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius cruise ship contracted the disease in the Argentine port of Ushuaia, a provincial health official said Friday.

Juan Petrina, director of epidemiology for Tierra del Fuego province, where Ushuaia is located, told reporters that his assessment was based on the virus’s incubation period, among other factors.

The Dutch man and his wife, both of whom died of the virus, boarded the Hondius in Ushuaia on April 1.

They spent 48 hours in the city before they set sail.

The Dutch man first displayed symptoms of the virus five days later on April 6, while at sea, Petrina noted.

“The time frames do not correspond to a possible infection in Ushuaia,” Petrina said.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the incubation period -- the time between infection and the onset of symptoms -- for hantavirus is between one and six weeks.

But it is typically between two and three weeks, WHO technical officer Anais Legand told AFP.

Petrina said authorities had been unable to confirm media reports that the Dutch couple, who were on a bird-watching tour of South America, visited a dump in Ushuaia where they could have been infected by rodents.

The Andes strain of the hantavirus, the only one that can transmit from person to person and was confirmed among some of those infected, has not been detected in Tierra del Fuego province since 1996.

The couple had also travelled in Chile, Uruguay and other parts of Argentina before the start of the cruise.

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said they visited sites where the species of rat that is known to carry the Andes strain was present.

Chile has ruled out the possibility that they became infected there.