Health authorities are still trying to determine where the infection originated. They believe one of the Dutch couple who contracted the virus and died are likely to be “patient zero”.
Officials have attempted to reconstruct their journey through Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, before they boarded the ship in Ushuaia, largely using border entry and exit records.
Chilean and Uruguayan authorities say the couple did not contract the virus in those countries, based on the World Health Organization’s estimated incubation period of between one and eight weeks.
Petrina agreed that they most likely contracted the illness in Argentina, but said he believed it was probably two to four weeks before the cruise. It could have been in a mountainous region in Patagonia, he said, perhaps in the provinces of Chubut, Neuquén or Río Negro.
The National Ministry of Health, meanwhile, has not put forward a definitive theory. “We cannot rule out, in principle, that the infections occurred in Tierra del Fuego, but there is an important fact to consider: since Hantavirus became a notifiable disease, no cases have ever been reported in the province,” it said.
It is hoped that the evacuation of the passengers and the crew from the MV Hondius in Tenerife might yet yield some clues.
But for now, without the Dutch couple to fill in the gaps and officials unable to fully reconstruct their travels, many questions about how this outbreak started remain unanswered.