The REAL hantavirus ‘ground zero’: Birdwatching Dutch couple didn’t catch rat virus from landfill site, says official, as NEW location falls under spotlight

Ground Zero of the deadly mouse virus that killed three cruise ship passengers is ‘almost certainly’ 1,500 miles further north of where Argentinian investigators believe it started, the Mail on Sunday has revealed.

Multiple official reports have claimed that the deadly strain of hantavirus, the only type of virus that can be transmitted between humans, originated at a large landfill and bird-watching area in the city of Ushuaia on Argentina’s southern tip.

But the MoS discovered that the Dutch couple who boarded the MV Hondius carrying the virus and were the first to die had recently visited northern Patagonia, where there have been 101 confirmed cases of the disease in the past few months, including 32 deaths.

Speaking from Ushuaia last night, Juan Petrina, director of epidemiology for Tierra del Fuego province, told this newspaper: ‘The virus never came here. We do not know where the information that the couple caught the virus from a local report came from. Even if they went there, which we don’t know, the colilargo mouse carrying the virus is not there.

‘They came here from an area where there were epidemics. They were in Northern Patagonia 25 to 30 days before arriving in Ushuaia. It is almost certain that they caught the disease there.

‘They arrived here on the afternoon of March 29th, so they only had two full days before boarding. ‘The incubation period is at least one week.’

The strain of virus that killed three cruise ship passengers is known as the Andean strain, found in the Neuquen, Rio Negro and Chubut provinces in northern Patagonia.

Argentina’s health ministry said on Friday it had convened a meeting with representatives of the country’s 24 provincial health ministries to determine the couple’s movements and try to find the original source of the outbreak.

The leading hypothesis of the Argentine government was that a deceased Dutch couple contracted Hantavirus while bird watching at a garbage dump in Ushuaia, Argentina. File photo shows garbage dump between birds and horses in Ushuaia city

A spokesman said there had been 42 cases of hantavirus in the country this year, but since last June there have been 101 cases and 32 people have died.

Argentine officials said they did not know how many of those deaths were caused by the human-to-human Andean variant.

The virus is transmitted by inhaling infected air through feces, urine or saliva.

The unnamed Dutch couple also visited Chile before heading south to board the cruise ship in Ushuaia on April 1.

However, late on Friday, a spokesperson from the Chilean health ministry stated that the incubation period of the disease did not coincide with their travels and said, “They were not transmitted in our country.”

The 70-year-old man became the first person to die on the ship on April 11; The captain told the passengers that he had died of ‘natural causes’, which led to passengers hugging and comforting his grieving widow (69).

The woman, who was traveling with her husband’s coffin to Johannesburg, South Africa, on April 24, began experiencing gastrointestinal symptoms.

His condition rapidly deteriorated and he was taken to the city hospital, where he died on 26 April.

But the MoS discovered that the Dutch couple who boarded the MV Hondius carrying the virus and were the first to die had recently visited northern Patagonia, where there have been 101 confirmed cases of the disease. Image: Hantavirus patient being evacuated from cruise ship earlier this week

Authorities said on April 24 that St. Louis, a British Overseas territory in the South Atlantic, He is frantically trying to find the 29 passengers who landed in Helena.

Passengers who need to get off Tenerife at noon on Sunday are expected to be quarantined for up to 45 days.

There were still 22 British people on the stricken ship.

While it was confirmed that at least five people on the ship, including the British doctor, caught hantavirus, it was stated that the doctor was in serious condition and was in intensive care.

Three other passengers have symptoms but are awaiting test results confirming they have the virus.

Argentina’s health ministry has confirmed that there are now nine cases of hantavirus in the country, with one person hospitalized in serious condition in Neuquen in northern Patagonia.

While the World Health Organization has been keen to downplay the suggestion that the Andean variant of hantavirus could develop into a Covid-style pandemic, there was a ‘superspreading’ event in 2018.

A man in rural Chubut province went to a birthday party due to high fever and infected 34 people. Eleven died.

Healthcare workers in protective suits evacuate patients from the cruise ship MV Hondius in a port in Praia, Cape Verde, on Wednesday

Tim Hackman, nephew of Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman, whose wife Betsy died of hantavirus in February 2025, said last night: ‘I wish everyone good luck. I hope everyone affected by this has a great support team around them.’

He said he had never heard of hantavirus before it killed his aunt.

Ms Hackman is thought to have contracted the disease after clearing a mouse nest in a shed on the couple’s New Mexico farm. While she fainted and died at home at the age of 65, her 95-year-old husband, who had advanced Alzheimer’s and heart disease, died a week later.