Ground zero for the deadly rat virus which killed three cruise ship passengers is ‘almost certainly’ 1,500 miles further north of where Argentine investigators believe it started, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Official reports have claimed the lethal strain of hantavirus – the only variant which can be transmitted between humans – originated on a massive landfill and bird-watching site in the city of Ushuaia at the southern tip of Argentina.
But the MoS has discovered that ‘patient zero’, Dutch ornithologist Leo Schilperoord, 70, who boarded the MV Hondius with his wife, Mirjam, 69, had recently visited northern Patagonia, where there have been 101 confirmed cases of the disease, including 32 deaths, over the past several months.
Speaking from Ushuaia, Juan Petrina, director of epidemiology for Tierra del Fuego state, last night told this newspaper: ‘The virus has never been here. We don’t know where the information is coming from saying the couple caught the virus at the local tip.
‘Even if they did go there, which we don’t know, the colilargo rat, which carries the virus, is not there.
‘They were in northern Patagonia 25 to 30 days before coming to Ushuaia. They almost certainly contracted the illness there.
‘They arrived here on the afternoon of March 29 so only had two full days before boarding the ship. The incubation period is at least a week.’
The strain of virus which killed both Mr and Mrs Schilperoord, as well as a third unnamed passenger, is known as the Andes strain and is found in Neuquen, Rio Negro and Chubut provinces in northern Patagonia.
Ornithologist Leo Schilperoord, 70, boarded the MV Hondius with his wife after making a fateful trip to a landfill site in Argentina, where they went birdwatching
An aerial view of an ambulance boat carrying crew members wearing hazmat suits as they approach the pilot door on the starboard side of the cruise ship MV Hondius
The Argentine government’s leading hypothesis was that a Dutch couple who died contracted Hantavirus during a bird-watching outing at a garbage dump in Ushuaia, Argentina
The virus is contracted by inhaling air infected by droppings, urine or saliva.
Argentine authorities said they did not know how many of the 32 deaths recorded since last June were caused by the Andes variant.
It is understood the Schilperoords had also visited Chile before travelling south to board the cruise ship in Ushuaia on April 1.
But a health ministry official in Chile stated on Friday that the incubation period for the disease did not match up with their trip, stressing: ‘They did not get it in our country’.
Mr Schilperoord was the first to die on board on April 11, with the captain telling passengers he had died ‘of natural causes’, which led fellow travellers to hug his grieving widow.
Mrs Schilperoord accompanied her husband’s casket to Johannesburg, South Africa, on April 24 but began suffering gastrointestinal symptoms. She died two days later.
The Argentinian health ministry confirmed yesterday there are currently nine cases of hantavirus in the country with one male patient in a critical condition.
While the World Health Organisation has been keen to play down the suggestion that the Andes variant of hantavirus could become a Covid-style pandemic, there was a ‘super-spreader’ event in 2018.
Read More
How deadly virus spread through ship as stranded passengers BEG to be let off before it hits them
A man in rural Chubut, Argentina, went to a birthday party while suffering a high temperature, infecting 34 people. Eleven died.
Tim Hackman, nephew of Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman – whose wife Betsy Arakawa died from hantavirus in February last year – said: ‘I wish everyone the best of luck. I hope anyone affected by this has a great support team around them.’
Ms Arakawa is believed to have contracted the disease after clearing out a rat’s nest in a shed on the couple’s New Mexico ranch.
