Authorities in Argentina are trapping rats to hunt down the source of the deadly hantavirus outbreak
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Argentine investigators searching for the source of the deadly hantavirus outbreak in a campaign that began last month were trapping rats in the forests surrounding the southern city of Ushuaia on Tuesday, with the aim of determining the possible presence of the rat-borne virus in the area that was thought to be unaffected.
The scientists, wearing blue gloves and surgical masks, looked at the 150 box traps they had set up the night before, tossing the dead mice into black plastic bags that they loaded onto trucks to a makeshift lab when they said they would take blood.
Tuesday’s seizure of the rats marks the start of a wide-ranging Argentine investigation into the source of the infection that swept the MV Hondius, killing three people, sickening several others, including a Canadian, and launching a search for passengers and their relatives.
Argentinian investigators who were wading through the mud to retrieve the dead rats declined to speak to reporters about their work.
The government-backed Malbrán Institute, Argentina’s leading infectious disease research center, said the team would repeat the process over the next three days before returning samples to the institute’s main laboratory in Buenos Aires to test for hantavirus.
The test could take up to one month, but officials were tight-lipped on other details.
“They were able to capture what was expected,” said Martín Alfaro, spokesperson for the Department of Health in Tierra del Fuego.
Canada’s first positive case of the Andes strain of hantavirus has been confirmed by BC infectious disease expert Dr. Srinivas Murthy describes the severity of the virus as ‘frightening,’ but says South America has successfully controlled it for decades.
The effort comes nearly two weeks after Argentina’s Ministry of Health first announced it would send a team from the Malbrán Institute to Ushuaia.
The popular tourist destination – famous for its location at the “end of the world” – serves as the main gateway to the Antarctic.
Questions surround the Argentine investigation
Hantavirus has never been recorded in Ushuaia or the wider islands of Tierra del Fuego.
But provincial officials further north in Patagonia where the hantavirus is endemic insist that the first known victims of the outbreak – a Dutch bird-loving couple – did not visit the window where they are believed to have been infected.
The Dutch tourists managed a long trip through Chile and Argentina in late March with a few days of bird watching and hiking in Ushuaia before boarding the ship on April 1.
Health authorities here rejected the national government’s initial theory that a series of travel illnesses began when the couple visited Ushuaia’s garbage dump.
Both have since died, making it difficult for Argentine investigators to retrace their path in the country in order to find out where they got the virus.
Found throughout southern Chile and Argentina, the Andes virus may be able to spread between people in rare cases. Most clusters of the Andes virus, experts say, come from exposure to air contaminated with the feces and urine of the long-tailed rice rat known as the “colilargo” that preys on the forests of northern Patagonia.
The colilargo itself cannot cross the Strait of Magellan in Tierra del Fuego, which is believed to be too cold and isolated, but the subspecies can be found in the forests around Ushuaia, and scientists have not tested whether it can transmit the hantavirus.
Noting that tourism-dependent Tierra del Fuego is not the source of the ship outbreak, health authorities here say they welcome the broader goal of the investigation: to find out if their province has hantavirus at all during global warming.
They said the scientists were trapping the rats in two areas where the colilargo subspecies is prevalent – a national park and wooded hills overlooking Ushuaia’s main rocky beach.
“The province has never tested this type before,” Alfaro said. “It is important that we rule out the possibility that the infection occurred here.”
The number of hantavirus cases has increased in recent years in Argentina, a trend scientists say colilargos are greatly expanding their range due to climate change and human immigration.
