A man from the Netherlands who died during the hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship has been identified.
“Patient Zero” was 70-year-old ornithologist Leo Schilperoord, who was with his wife, 69-year-old Mirjam Schilperoord, on the extended trip to South America where they were bird-watching, the New York Post reported Saturday.
The bird-watching couple were in Argentina in late March to visit a landfill a few miles outside the city of Ushuaia where people from all over the world go hoping to catch a glimpse of the rare white-throated caracara.
Ushuaia is considered the southern-most city on earth, earning it the nickname “The City at the End of the World.”
“The Ushuaia landfill is where Argentinian authorities suspect the Dutch couple inhaled particles from the feces of long-tailed pygmy rice rats, which carry the feared Andes strain of the hantavirus — the only form known to transmit from human to human,” the article said.
The Post continued:
Four days later, on April 1, the couple embarked on the MV Hondius from Ushuaia, along with 112 others, many of whom were also bird watchers or scientists. On April 6, Leo reported having a fever, headache, stomach pain and diarrhea. He died on the ship five days later.
In a 2024 post about hantaviruses, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said they are known to cause serious illness or death:
Hantaviruses can infect and cause serious disease in people worldwide. People get hantavirus from contact with rodents like rats and mice, especially when exposed to their urine, droppings, and saliva. It can also spread through a bite or scratch by a rodent, but this is rare.
The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) warned this week there may be more cases in the near future after the three people on the MV Hondius died, AFP reported.
However, “[H]ealth officials have played down fears of a wider global outbreak from the rat‑borne virus, which is less contagious than Covid‑19,” AFP stated.
The CDC classified the cruise ship outbreak as a “Level 3,” which is the lowest level of emergency, per Breitbart News.
When a reporter asked President Donald Trump this week if he had been briefed on the virus, he said he had and that it was hopefully under control:
“We have a lot of great people studying it. It should be fine, we hope,” he said.