Ushuaia Faces Hantavirus Scrutiny as Cruise Bookings Drop
Travel agents say some Americans and Europeans have canceled cruise bookings as authorities investigate whether the outbreak began there.
- Speculation linking a deadly hantavirus outbreak on an Atlantic cruise to Ushuaia has prompted Americans and Europeans to cancel Antarctic cruise bookings from the Argentine hub. Travel agents report the Andes virus fears are already affecting reservations for next season.
- Argentina's Health Ministry is examining whether a Dutch couple who died in April contracted the rat-borne virus in Ushuaia during their monthslong road trip through Argentina and Chile. Health officials have no record of the couple visiting endemic areas during the nine to 45 day incubation period.
- Ninety percent of Antarctic cruises depart from Ushuaia, a city of 80,000 that relies on tourism for over 25% of its revenue. Authorities in Tierra del Fuego Province claim they are victims of a smear campaign despite no evidence the outbreak started there.
- Scientists from a government research institute have yet to arrive more than two weeks after Argentina's Health Ministry said it would send them to test rodents. Mark Loafman, a family medicine doctor at Cook County Health in Chicago, urged reliance on science rather than tourism concerns.
- The Pan American Health Organization stated the Andes hantavirus is endemic in the Patagonian region spanning southern Chile and Argentina. Ushuaia authorities argue contagion likely originated there rather than in their city, which has never registered a case of the virus.
35 Articles
35 Articles
Argentina’s windy outpost at the end of the world fears the hantavirus will chill tourism
Travelers hoping to catch a glimpse of Magellanic penguins and humpback whales have journeyed in greater numbers every year to Ushuaia, the main Antarctic cruise hub at the southernmost point of Argentina.
Argentina's icy outpost at the end of the world worries the hantavirus will chill tourism
Travelers hoping to catch a glimpse of Magellanic penguins and humpback whales have journeyed in greater numbers every year to Ushuaia, the main Antarctic cruise hub at the southernmost point of Argentina.
A scientific expedition began today to search for rodents that could carry hantavirus after an outbreak on a cruise ship that left this area on the southern tip of Argentina on April 1. For several days, biologists from Buenos Aires will set traps in various locations on the southern island of Tierra del Fuego to investigate whether the rodents they catch carry the Andean strain of the virus, the only one...
Associated Press News
Argentina's icy outpost at the end of the world fears the hantavirus will chill tourism
The city of Ushuaia in Argentina, which bills itself as the “end of the world,” has found itself at the center of a global media storm involving a deadly hantavirus outbreak on a cruise that departed from its port.
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