EPUYEN: Mailen Valle lost her father and two sisters in a hantavirus outbreak more than seven years ago in Epuyen, a village in Argentina&#39;s Patagonia region. With the recent hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius cruise ship, hard memories have resurfaced for the 33-year-old. &quot;Losing my dad and my two sisters in less than a month...&quot; she told AFP. Her voice broke, and she laughed nervously, opting to read from a prepared statement because she knew it would be hard to speak. &quot;Nobody was prepared to see how, in a matter of days, a family table was left empty,&quot; she recalled. 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&#39;s father, Aldo Valle, came down with it after attending a birthday party. &quot;The person with the virus was just sitting at the same table as my dad. And at that table, several people got infected, and people died,&quot; Mailen recalled. The wake for Valle was another locus of infection, where all three of his daughters got sick. One sister died &quot;within hours&quot; of showing symptoms, while for the other, &quot;we had to take her to the cemetery without a wake,&quot; Mailen said. Pre-Covid isolationThe 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&#39;s health department who worked on the Epuyen hantavirus outbreak, told AFP that &quot;we knew very little about the disease&quot; in 2018. Human-to-human transmission of hantavirus was first documented in 1996 in the neighboring town of El Bolson and was later found to have occurred in Epuyen. &quot;We implemented quarantine, which required those who made contact with a positive case to isolate for 45 days,&quot; Diaz explained. About 100 people underwent quarantine, a display that would foreshadow the COVID-19 pandemic that broke out a year later. The approach, dubbed &quot;selective isolation,&quot; marked a shift in the epidemiological response, and now &quot;each time there is a case of (Andes) hantavirus, isolation is ordered or recommended.&quot; &#39;One thing after another&#39;Residents in Patagonia know how to protect themselves from the virus, which they call &quot;the hanta,&quot; 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. &quot;We felt very discriminated against,&quot; 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 &quot;patient zero&quot; and attended the birthday party while displaying the early symptoms of hantavirus. &quot;People looked poorly at my father. It&#39;s not his fault he got sick,&quot; she told AFP, her eyes welling up. &quot;Nobody chooses to get sick, much less infect others, much less lose a mother.&quot; Isabel got sick from her father&#39;s hantavirus case, as well as her mother. &quot;She was the sixth patient&quot; 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. &quot;It started with a feeling of weakness. I didn&#39;t feel like eating. And I started to get purple spots,&quot; he said. &quot;That same day, I lost consciousness.&quot; 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. &quot;It&#39;s one thing after another,&quot; Victor said, laughing. &quot;No one is going to tell us what it means to live life and keep moving forward,&quot; Isabel Diaz added.

Americas

Survivors of Argentina’s deadly 2018 hantavirus outbreak recall painful memories after the recent cruise ship outbreak, highlighting trauma, stigma, quarantine measures and the lasting impact of the rare disease.

Argentina’s deadly hantavirus memories resurface after cruise ship outbreak

Web Desk/AFP

NAIROBI:&nbsp;Ethiopia has confirmed an outbreak of the deadly Marburg virus in the south of the country, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said on Saturday. The World Health Organization said both viruses belong to the filovirus family, the same group that includes the Ebola virus, and cause severe illness that is clinically similar to Ebola virus disease.&nbsp; Also like Ebola, it is transmitted through contact with bodily fluids and has a fatality rate of between 25% and 80%. The Marburg virus is one of the deadliest known pathogens.&nbsp; The World Health Organization states that patients often experience sudden high fever, severe headache and malaise, followed by diarrhoea, vomiting and abdominal pain. &nbsp;A non-itchy rash can appear between days two and seven.&nbsp; From day five, patients may show hemorrhagic signs including bleeding from the nose, gums and venepuncture sites. Confusion, irritability and orchitis have been documented in later stages. Diagnosing the disease is challenging because early symptoms resemble malaria, typhoid, meningitis and other viral hemorrhagic fevers, according to WHO. The Marburg virus is transmitted to people from fruit bats and spreads among humans through human-to-human transmission, World Health Organization&nbsp;says.&nbsp; The head of WHO, Ethiopia&rsquo;s Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, confirmed on Friday that at least nine cases had been detected in southern Ethiopia, two days after Africa CDC was alerted to a suspected hemorrhagic virus in the region. &ldquo;Marburg virus disease (MVD) has been confirmed by the National Reference Laboratory (in Ethiopia),&rdquo; Africa CDC said. &ldquo;Further epidemiological investigations and laboratory analyses are underway, and the virus strain detected shows similarities to those previously identified in East Africa.&rdquo; It said Ethiopian health authorities had acted swiftly to confirm and contain the outbreak in the Jinka area. Africa CDC said it would work with Ethiopia to ensure an effective response and reduce the risk of the virus spreading to other parts of East Africa. An epidemic of Marburg virus killed 10 people in Tanzania in January before being declared over in March. Rwanda said in December 2024 that it had managed to stamp out its first known Marburg epidemic, which caused 15 deaths. There is no approved vaccine or antiviral treatment for the Marburg virus, but oral or intravenous rehydration and treatment of specific symptoms increase patients&rsquo; chances of survival. Last year, Rwanda trialed an experimental vaccine from the US-based Sabin Vaccine Institute.

FILE PHOTO - Internally displaced children play at Berley Camp, 20 kilometres from the city of Gode, Ethiopia, on January 10, 2023. (AFP)

Africa

Ethiopia has confirmed an outbreak of the deadly Marburg virus in the south of the country, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said on Saturday.

Articles tagged with "Virus"

Argentina’s deadly hantavirus memories resurface after cruise ship outbreak

Ethiopia confirms deadly Marburg virus outbreak: Africa CDC

Argentina’s deadly hantavirus memories resurface after cruise ship outbreak