A rare and deadly hantavirus outbreak aboard a luxury cruise ship may have started with a male passenger who boarded the vessel after he was infected with the virus, according to a health expert with the World Health Organization.
The passenger was one of three aboard the Dutch-flagged MV Hondius who died of the virus. Five other passengers have tested positive for it and three others are suspected of being infected.
The virus has been identified as the Andes virus, the only species of hantavirus that can be transmitted from one person to another.
The Argentine government says it believes the male passenger and his wife, who also died, contracted the virus during a bird-watching outing at a landfill in Ushuaia before boarding the ship.
The incubation period for the virus is usually about “two to three weeks,” according to Anais Legand, an expert on viral haemorrhagic fevers at the WHO.
