PARIS — An elderly man had just started running a fever when he walked into a birthday party in the Argentine village of Epuyen in 2018.
That began the last “super-spreader” event of the Andes strain of hantavirus, before a recent deadly outbreak on a cruise ship focused attention on this rare disease.
With the race on to track down anyone who had contact with infected passengers, an investigation into the 2018 outbreak has offered clues to how this illness spreads.
READ: First hantavirus infection could not have been during cruise – WHO
Argentine scientists analysed samples from most of the 33 infected people, which included 11 deaths, during the Epuyen outbreak, and reconstructed how people interacted at that fateful party.
They found that isolation measures helped stave off a wider outbreak — and that most human-to-human transmissions occurred on the first day the infected person had a fever.
Three people have died during the MV Hondius outbreak, including a Dutch couple who had travelled to Argentina, where hantavirus is endemic, before boarding the ship.