Three people have died and several others were sickened following a hantavirus outbreak linked to the MV Hondius cruise last month, prompting Argentine investigators to begin trapping rodents in the forests surrounding Ushuaia. The state-backed Malbrán Institute, Argentina’s leading research center for infectious diseases, commenced fieldwork on Tuesday, almost two weeks after the Argentine Health Ministry announced the team would be sent to the popular tourism destination.
Scientists, equipped with bright blue gloves and surgical masks, checked 150 box traps set out the previous night. Dead rats were collected into black plastic bags and transported to a makeshift lab for blood sample collection. The team plans to repeat this routine for three days before returning to the institute’s main Buenos Aires laboratory for hantavirus testing, a process that could take up to one month.
Martín Alfaro, spokesperson for the local health ministry of Tierra del Fuego, stated that investigators “were able to capture what was expected.” Officials remained tight-lipped about further details of the investigation. The MV Hondius departed Ushuaia on April 1, same year, after a Dutch couple, who were the first known victims of the outbreak, concluded a road trip across Chile and Argentina in late March, same year, with days of bird-watching and trekking in Ushuaia.
The Cost of Capital's Reach
Ushuaia, famed for its location at the “end of the world,” serves as the main gateway to the Antarctic, a key hub for the global tourism industry. Health authorities rejected the national government’s initial hypothesis that the chain of infections began when the Dutch couple visited an Ushuaia landfill. Both tourists have since died, complicating efforts to retrace their path and determine where they contracted the virus. The hantavirus has never been recorded in Ushuaia or the wider archipelago of Tierra del Fuego, though provincial officials further north in Patagonia, where the virus is endemic, insist the couple did not visit during the believed infection window.
The Andes virus, found throughout southern Chile and Argentina, can spread between people in rare cases. Experts state that most clusters emerge from exposure to air contaminated with the feces and urine of the long-tailed pygmy rice rat, known as the colilargo, which proliferates in northern Patagonian forests. While the colilargo itself is not found in Tierra del Fuego, a subspecies exists in the forests around Ushuaia, and scientists have never examined its potential to transmit hantavirus.
State Response and Systemic Neglect
Health authorities in Tierra del Fuego welcomed a broader objective of the investigation: determining if hantavirus is present in their province at all, particularly in the context of global warming. Scientists are trapping rats in two areas where the colilargo subspecies is abundant: the national park and wooded hillsides overlooking Ushuaia’s main pebble beach. Alfaro noted that “The province has never done this kind of testing before,” adding, “It’s important that we rule out the possibility of transmission occurring here.”
The number of hantavirus cases has increased in recent years across Argentina. Scientists attribute this trend to colilargos vastly increasing their range as a direct result of climate change and human encroachment. This expansion of human activity into natural habitats, driven by economic development and tourism, creates new vectors for disease transmission, with the public bearing the cost of illness and death while the underlying structural drivers remain unaddressed.