ByAFP
May 13, 2026
Hantavirus: pour les experts, le défi d'informer sans réveiller la peur du Covid
- Copyright AFP/File Joel Saget
Chloe Rabs and Isabelle Cortes
Thrust back into the front line by a deadly hantavirus outbreak, infectious disease experts have to balance informing the public about its potential risks without provoking undue fear of a Covid-scale pandemic.
The deaths of three cruise ship passengers during a rare hantavirus outbreak has sparked international alarm — and flashbacks to when the world tipped into a pandemic six years ago.
Among the living, seven people have been confirmed to have hantavirus, including a French woman in a critical condition, while an eighth case is considered “probable”, according to an AFP tally.
All the suspected infections have been among people who were onboard the ship, however several nations have quarantined those who were in contact with passengers.
The World Health Organization has said it expects more cases to emerge but emphasised there “is no sign that we are seeing the start of a larger outbreak”.
In a throw-back to the Covid era, the outbreak has put infectious disease specialists, virologists and epidemiologists back into the news.
When epidemiologist Antoine Flahault addressed a French governmental health conference alongside other health experts on Tuesday, he urged scientists, journalists and the general public to “be wary of preconceived notions”.
There are important lessons to be learnt from how the science of Covid was communicated, the professor at the Paris Cite University told AFP later.
“First, that we did not know everything. Second, that knowledge was evolving… and that there were very lively debates among scientists on aspects that sometimes surprised the public,” Flahault said.
Luc Ginot, who served as a regional public health director in France during the pandemic, said it was important doctors did not “disseminate just any information that might disrupt the coherence of the overall health response”.
– ‘Limited data’ –
Health experts — and the WHO — have been emphasising that hantavirus is not comparable to Covid, and that the risk to the wider public remains low.
Unlike Covid, the Andes strain of hantavirus is not new, and a few previous human-to-human transmission events have been studied.
However some experts have also called on health authorities not to overstate what is known about hantavirus while trying to tamp down pandemic fears.
“I’m not particularly worried there will be much onward spread of hantavirus,” Jennifer Nuzzo, a professor of epidemiology at Brown University in the United States, wrote on Bluesky.
“But I am concerned that authorities are making confident statements based on very limited data.”
Nuzzo felt “there’s too little data” to indicate whether infected people needed to be displaying symptoms — or be in “close, prolonged contact” — to transmit the virus to others.
Research into a 2018 outbreak in the Argentina region of Patagonia, where the Andes strain is endemic, found that most cases were transmitted on the first day an infected person had a fever.
However a few people were found to have caught the virus from a man sitting more than a metre away at a birthday party.
Caroline Semaille, director of Public Health France, also said it could not be ruled out that people transmit the virus “48 hours before the onset of symptoms”.
– Conspiracy theories return –
Flahault also urged caution about the time it takes between being infected with the Andes strain and symptoms showing, which is thought to be up to six weeks.
This is a “neglected tropical disease” and further research could reveal a longer or shorter incubation period, he said.
The fatality rate of the virus, commonly cited as around 40 percent, could also be quite different outside of rural areas of Argentina where there may be little health infrastructure, Flahault added.
For example, when patients with the similarly deadly Ebola are treated in Europe or the United States, “the fatality rate is zero,” he said.
There are no treatments or vaccines specifically targeted at hantavirus.
But that has not stopped conspiracy theories and disinformation about vaccines and hantavirus spreading widely online — another echo of the Covid era.
French infectious disease specialist Nathan Peiffer-Smadja said that “managing an outbreak is not about reassuring people and downplaying the situation… nor is it about predicting the next Covid”.
“It’s about providing transparent information,” he wrote on Bluesky.
Chloe Rabs and Isabelle Cortes
Thrust back into the front line by a deadly hantavirus outbreak, infectious disease experts have to balance informing the public about its potential risks without provoking undue fear of a Covid-scale pandemic.
The deaths of three cruise ship passengers during a rare hantavirus outbreak has sparked international alarm — and flashbacks to when the world tipped into a pandemic six years ago.
Among the living, seven people have been confirmed to have hantavirus, including a French woman in a critical condition, while an eighth case is considered “probable”, according to an AFP tally.
All the suspected infections have been among people who were onboard the ship, however several nations have quarantined those who were in contact with passengers.
The World Health Organization has said it expects more cases to emerge but emphasised there “is no sign that we are seeing the start of a larger outbreak”.
In a throw-back to the Covid era, the outbreak has put infectious disease specialists, virologists and epidemiologists back into the news.
When epidemiologist Antoine Flahault addressed a French governmental health conference alongside other health experts on Tuesday, he urged scientists, journalists and the general public to “be wary of preconceived notions”.
There are important lessons to be learnt from how the science of Covid was communicated, the professor at the Paris Cite University told AFP later.
“First, that we did not know everything. Second, that knowledge was evolving… and that there were very lively debates among scientists on aspects that sometimes surprised the public,” Flahault said.
Luc Ginot, who served as a regional public health director in France during the pandemic, said it was important doctors did not “disseminate just any information that might disrupt the coherence of the overall health response”.
– ‘Limited data’ –
Health experts — and the WHO — have been emphasising that hantavirus is not comparable to Covid, and that the risk to the wider public remains low.
Unlike Covid, the Andes strain of hantavirus is not new, and a few previous human-to-human transmission events have been studied.
However some experts have also called on health authorities not to overstate what is known about hantavirus while trying to tamp down pandemic fears.
“I’m not particularly worried there will be much onward spread of hantavirus,” Jennifer Nuzzo, a professor of epidemiology at Brown University in the United States, wrote on Bluesky.
“But I am concerned that authorities are making confident statements based on very limited data.”
Nuzzo felt “there’s too little data” to indicate whether infected people needed to be displaying symptoms — or be in “close, prolonged contact” — to transmit the virus to others.
Research into a 2018 outbreak in the Argentina region of Patagonia, where the Andes strain is endemic, found that most cases were transmitted on the first day an infected person had a fever.
However a few people were found to have caught the virus from a man sitting more than a metre away at a birthday party.
Caroline Semaille, director of Public Health France, also said it could not be ruled out that people transmit the virus “48 hours before the onset of symptoms”.
– Conspiracy theories return –
Flahault also urged caution about the time it takes between being infected with the Andes strain and symptoms showing, which is thought to be up to six weeks.
This is a “neglected tropical disease” and further research could reveal a longer or shorter incubation period, he said.
The fatality rate of the virus, commonly cited as around 40 percent, could also be quite different outside of rural areas of Argentina where there may be little health infrastructure, Flahault added.
For example, when patients with the similarly deadly Ebola are treated in Europe or the United States, “the fatality rate is zero,” he said.
There are no treatments or vaccines specifically targeted at hantavirus.
But that has not stopped conspiracy theories and disinformation about vaccines and hantavirus spreading widely online — another echo of the Covid era.
French infectious disease specialist Nathan Peiffer-Smadja said that “managing an outbreak is not about reassuring people and downplaying the situation… nor is it about predicting the next Covid”.
“It’s about providing transparent information,” he wrote on Bluesky.
Fabled Argentine city Ushuaia tries to shrug off virus suspicions
By AFP
May 12, 2026
Tourists take in the scenery in the remote southern Argentine port of Ushuaia, from where the hantavirus-struck MV Hondius set sail - Copyright AFP Cristian URRUTIA
Gabriel RAMONET
Argentina’s city “at the end of the world,” Ushuaia, the jump-off point for expeditions to the Antarctic, is laboring under suspicion of being the source of the deadly hantavirus outbreak that killed three cruise ship passengers.
The MV Hondius set sail from this spectacular Patagonian port, sandwiched between snow-capped mountains and the South Atlantic, on April 1.
Five days later, a Dutch man who had travelled through South America on a birdwatching trip with his wife, developed symptoms of hantavirus, a rodent-borne disease.
He, his wife and another of the ship’s passengers later died of the virus, which has revived bitter memories of the emergence of Covid-19, despite health experts downplaying similarities between the viruses.
The search for answers about the outbreak has pointed towards Ushuaia, even as authorities there insist the likelihood of the Dutch couple becoming infected during the 48 hours they spent in the city before their cruise is “almost zero.”
As winter draws near, the tourist season is winding down.
The last of around 500 cruise ships that dock here each year have disappeared from the horizon, replaced by small tour boats that ferry the few remaining tourists in the city to nearby sea lion and bird colonies.
“Everything seems normal to me, things seem fine,” Luis Cardona, a Colombian who was visiting with his wife, told AFP, shoulders hunched against the wind and rain.
But the couple are taking no chances all the same. Both are wearing face masks, “for the cold, and for the (hantavirus) situation,” Cardona admitted.
– ‘A bit worried’ –
“We have seen a few people wearing masks, but very few,” said Silvina Galarza, who was visiting from Concordia, 2,700 kilometers (1,677 miles) away in north-central Argentina.
As she disembarked with around 40 other tourists from a tour boat she assured that “nobody was talking about it (the virus) but admitted herself to being “a bit worried.”
Authorities in Tierra del Fuego province, where Ushuaia is situated in the southern tip of Argentina, are adamant that it could not be the birthplace of the outbreak as the dead Dutchman, patient zero in the outbreak, fell sick five days after setting sail.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the incubation period — the time between infection and the onset of symptoms — for hantavirus ranges from one and six weeks but is typically between two and three.
Local officials also note that Tierra del Fuego has had no recorded hantavirus case since 1996 and that the “colilargo” or long-tailed mouse that carries the Andes strain detected in the Dutch woman, as well as several surviving patients, is native to Argentina’s northern provinces.
Doubts remain however over a local subspecies of the rodent.
A team of Argentine experts are expected in Ushuaia in the coming days to capture and test specimens for the virus.
– Landfill theory –
A huge landfill situated about six kilometers outside of Ushuaia has been the focus of intense speculation.
Local media have reported that the Dutch couple may have visited the area to try to sight local bird species such as the white-throated caracara, a member of the falcon family.
The dump, which is partly open air, attracts large numbers of scavenger birds. It is sealed off by a wire fence but can be approached by a series of dirt paths.
While no known tours to the landfill exist, Juan Manuel Pavlov, the regional tourism chief, told AFP he had got wind of some agencies visiting the area, reportedly in search of rare birds.
Guillermo Deferrari, of Ushuaia’s scientific research center, downplayed the landfill theory, explaining that the colilargo is herbivore and lives off seeds and fruit found in forested ecosystems, not in dumps, where the common rat feeds.
And yet the suspicions stubbornly linger, causing frustration, and some concern, among tour operators.
– ‘Not good’ for tourism –
“It’s clearly not a good thing, for a destination, to be associated with the spread of a disease,” Angel Brisighelli, manager of a tourist boat company, said.
Despite authorities downplaying Tierra del Fuego’s potential role in the outbreak, “the reality is that everybody is talking about the boat that left from Ushuaia,” he remarked.
A light dusting of snow fell on the area on Monday, signalling the upcoming start of the ski season.
Luis Cardona, the Colombian visitor, has no plans to hit the slopes but assures that, virus or no virus, he would “have no problem returning” to Ushuaia.
By AFP
May 12, 2026
Tourists take in the scenery in the remote southern Argentine port of Ushuaia, from where the hantavirus-struck MV Hondius set sail - Copyright AFP Cristian URRUTIA
Gabriel RAMONET
Argentina’s city “at the end of the world,” Ushuaia, the jump-off point for expeditions to the Antarctic, is laboring under suspicion of being the source of the deadly hantavirus outbreak that killed three cruise ship passengers.
The MV Hondius set sail from this spectacular Patagonian port, sandwiched between snow-capped mountains and the South Atlantic, on April 1.
Five days later, a Dutch man who had travelled through South America on a birdwatching trip with his wife, developed symptoms of hantavirus, a rodent-borne disease.
He, his wife and another of the ship’s passengers later died of the virus, which has revived bitter memories of the emergence of Covid-19, despite health experts downplaying similarities between the viruses.
The search for answers about the outbreak has pointed towards Ushuaia, even as authorities there insist the likelihood of the Dutch couple becoming infected during the 48 hours they spent in the city before their cruise is “almost zero.”
As winter draws near, the tourist season is winding down.
The last of around 500 cruise ships that dock here each year have disappeared from the horizon, replaced by small tour boats that ferry the few remaining tourists in the city to nearby sea lion and bird colonies.
“Everything seems normal to me, things seem fine,” Luis Cardona, a Colombian who was visiting with his wife, told AFP, shoulders hunched against the wind and rain.
But the couple are taking no chances all the same. Both are wearing face masks, “for the cold, and for the (hantavirus) situation,” Cardona admitted.
– ‘A bit worried’ –
“We have seen a few people wearing masks, but very few,” said Silvina Galarza, who was visiting from Concordia, 2,700 kilometers (1,677 miles) away in north-central Argentina.
As she disembarked with around 40 other tourists from a tour boat she assured that “nobody was talking about it (the virus) but admitted herself to being “a bit worried.”
Authorities in Tierra del Fuego province, where Ushuaia is situated in the southern tip of Argentina, are adamant that it could not be the birthplace of the outbreak as the dead Dutchman, patient zero in the outbreak, fell sick five days after setting sail.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the incubation period — the time between infection and the onset of symptoms — for hantavirus ranges from one and six weeks but is typically between two and three.
Local officials also note that Tierra del Fuego has had no recorded hantavirus case since 1996 and that the “colilargo” or long-tailed mouse that carries the Andes strain detected in the Dutch woman, as well as several surviving patients, is native to Argentina’s northern provinces.
Doubts remain however over a local subspecies of the rodent.
A team of Argentine experts are expected in Ushuaia in the coming days to capture and test specimens for the virus.
– Landfill theory –
A huge landfill situated about six kilometers outside of Ushuaia has been the focus of intense speculation.
Local media have reported that the Dutch couple may have visited the area to try to sight local bird species such as the white-throated caracara, a member of the falcon family.
The dump, which is partly open air, attracts large numbers of scavenger birds. It is sealed off by a wire fence but can be approached by a series of dirt paths.
While no known tours to the landfill exist, Juan Manuel Pavlov, the regional tourism chief, told AFP he had got wind of some agencies visiting the area, reportedly in search of rare birds.
Guillermo Deferrari, of Ushuaia’s scientific research center, downplayed the landfill theory, explaining that the colilargo is herbivore and lives off seeds and fruit found in forested ecosystems, not in dumps, where the common rat feeds.
And yet the suspicions stubbornly linger, causing frustration, and some concern, among tour operators.
– ‘Not good’ for tourism –
“It’s clearly not a good thing, for a destination, to be associated with the spread of a disease,” Angel Brisighelli, manager of a tourist boat company, said.
Despite authorities downplaying Tierra del Fuego’s potential role in the outbreak, “the reality is that everybody is talking about the boat that left from Ushuaia,” he remarked.
A light dusting of snow fell on the area on Monday, signalling the upcoming start of the ski season.
Luis Cardona, the Colombian visitor, has no plans to hit the slopes but assures that, virus or no virus, he would “have no problem returning” to Ushuaia.
Hantavirus outbreak renews painful memories for Patagonian village
ByAFP
May 11, 2026
An aerial view of Epuyen, Argentina, where a hantavirus outbreak caused 11 people to die over several months in 2018-2019 - Copyright AFP JUAN MABROMATA
Leila MACOR
Mailen Valle lost her father and two sisters during a hantavirus outbreak more than seven years ago in Epuyen, a village in Argentina’s Patagonia region.
With the recent hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius cruise ship, hard memories have resurfaced for the 33-year-old.
“Losing my dad and my two sisters in less than a month…” she told AFP, trailing off.
Her voice broke and she laughed nervously, opting to read from a prepared statement because she knew it would be hard to speak.
“Nobody was prepared to see how, in a matter of days, a family table was left empty,” she said.
While the Hondius outbreak has left three people dead, it has yet to surpass the Epuyen outbreak, which recorded 34 cases and 11 fatalities between December 2018 and March 2019 in the town of 2,400 residents, situated in a part of the Andes where hantavirus is endemic.
Mailen’s father, Aldo Valle, came down with it after attending a birthday party.
“The person with the virus was just sitting at the same table as my dad. And at that table there were several people who got infected, and people died,” Mailen recalled.
The wake for Valle was another locus of infection, where all three of his daughters got sick.
One sister died “within hours” of showing symptoms, while for the other, “we had to take her to the cemetery without a wake,” Mailen said.
– Pre-Covid isolation –
The variant of the hantavirus suspected in both outbreaks is transmitted through the droppings, saliva and urine of the Andean mouse.
Jorge Diaz, an epidemiologist with Chubut province’s health department who worked on the Epuyen hantavirus outbreak, told AFP that “we knew very little about the disease” in 2018.
Human-to-human transmission of hantavirus was first discovered in 1996 in the neighboring town of El Bolson, and it was later found to have happened in Epuyen.
“We implemented quarantine, which required those who made contact with a positive case to isolate for 45 days,” Diaz explained.
About 100 people ended up undergoing the quarantine process in a display that would foreshadow the Covid-19 pandemic that broke out a year later.
The approach, dubbed “selective isolation,” marked a shift in the epidemiological response, and now “each time there is a case of (Andes) hantavirus, isolation is ordered or recommended.”
– ‘One thing after another’ –
Residents in Patagonia know how to protect themselves from the virus, which they refer to as “the hanta,” by airing out sheds and cleaning areas with bleach.
But the human transmission of the Epuyen outbreak changed the scale of the fight, as one could get infected from their neighbor just as easily as from an Andean mouse.
Mailen remembers the stigma. “We felt very discriminated against,” she said.
Others recall being banned from shops in nearby towns.
Isabel Diaz, 53, survived the outbreak with a different stigma — her father, Victor Diaz, was labeled “patient zero,” and attended the birthday party while displaying the early symptoms of hantavirus.
“People looked poorly at my father. It’s not his fault he got sick,” she told AFP, her eyes welling up.
“Nobody chooses to get sick, much less infect others, much less lose a mother.”
Isabel got sick from her father’s hantavirus case, as well as her mother. “She was the sixth patient” of the eleven who died, she said.
Her father, for his part, recalled how it felt to come down with hantavirus, causing body aches and a bitter taste that even made sipping water unpleasant.
“It started with a feeling of weakness. I didn’t feel like eating. And I started to get purple spots,” he said. “That same day, I lost consciousness.”
In the years since the hantavirus outbreak, Epuyen has endured the Covid-19 pandemic and major wildfires in 2025 and 2026, permanently changing the landscape.
“It’s one thing after another,” Victor said, laughing.
“No one is going to tell us what it means to live life and keep moving forward,” Isabel Diaz added.
ByAFP
May 11, 2026
An aerial view of Epuyen, Argentina, where a hantavirus outbreak caused 11 people to die over several months in 2018-2019 - Copyright AFP JUAN MABROMATA
Leila MACOR
Mailen Valle lost her father and two sisters during a hantavirus outbreak more than seven years ago in Epuyen, a village in Argentina’s Patagonia region.
With the recent hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius cruise ship, hard memories have resurfaced for the 33-year-old.
“Losing my dad and my two sisters in less than a month…” she told AFP, trailing off.
Her voice broke and she laughed nervously, opting to read from a prepared statement because she knew it would be hard to speak.
“Nobody was prepared to see how, in a matter of days, a family table was left empty,” she said.
While the Hondius outbreak has left three people dead, it has yet to surpass the Epuyen outbreak, which recorded 34 cases and 11 fatalities between December 2018 and March 2019 in the town of 2,400 residents, situated in a part of the Andes where hantavirus is endemic.
Mailen’s father, Aldo Valle, came down with it after attending a birthday party.
“The person with the virus was just sitting at the same table as my dad. And at that table there were several people who got infected, and people died,” Mailen recalled.
The wake for Valle was another locus of infection, where all three of his daughters got sick.
One sister died “within hours” of showing symptoms, while for the other, “we had to take her to the cemetery without a wake,” Mailen said.
– Pre-Covid isolation –
The variant of the hantavirus suspected in both outbreaks is transmitted through the droppings, saliva and urine of the Andean mouse.
Jorge Diaz, an epidemiologist with Chubut province’s health department who worked on the Epuyen hantavirus outbreak, told AFP that “we knew very little about the disease” in 2018.
Human-to-human transmission of hantavirus was first discovered in 1996 in the neighboring town of El Bolson, and it was later found to have happened in Epuyen.
“We implemented quarantine, which required those who made contact with a positive case to isolate for 45 days,” Diaz explained.
About 100 people ended up undergoing the quarantine process in a display that would foreshadow the Covid-19 pandemic that broke out a year later.
The approach, dubbed “selective isolation,” marked a shift in the epidemiological response, and now “each time there is a case of (Andes) hantavirus, isolation is ordered or recommended.”
– ‘One thing after another’ –
Residents in Patagonia know how to protect themselves from the virus, which they refer to as “the hanta,” by airing out sheds and cleaning areas with bleach.
But the human transmission of the Epuyen outbreak changed the scale of the fight, as one could get infected from their neighbor just as easily as from an Andean mouse.
Mailen remembers the stigma. “We felt very discriminated against,” she said.
Others recall being banned from shops in nearby towns.
Isabel Diaz, 53, survived the outbreak with a different stigma — her father, Victor Diaz, was labeled “patient zero,” and attended the birthday party while displaying the early symptoms of hantavirus.
“People looked poorly at my father. It’s not his fault he got sick,” she told AFP, her eyes welling up.
“Nobody chooses to get sick, much less infect others, much less lose a mother.”
Isabel got sick from her father’s hantavirus case, as well as her mother. “She was the sixth patient” of the eleven who died, she said.
Her father, for his part, recalled how it felt to come down with hantavirus, causing body aches and a bitter taste that even made sipping water unpleasant.
“It started with a feeling of weakness. I didn’t feel like eating. And I started to get purple spots,” he said. “That same day, I lost consciousness.”
In the years since the hantavirus outbreak, Epuyen has endured the Covid-19 pandemic and major wildfires in 2025 and 2026, permanently changing the landscape.
“It’s one thing after another,” Victor said, laughing.
“No one is going to tell us what it means to live life and keep moving forward,” Isabel Diaz added.
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