- Dutch ornithologist Leo Schilperoord died after visiting a landfill in Argentina for birdwatching
- Leo was the first hantavirus patient; WHO reports eight cases and three deaths globally
- His wife Mirjam also contracted hantavirus and died after being removed from a flight in South Africa
Dutch ornithologist Leo Schilperoord and his wife Mirjam Schilperoord on March 27 visited a landfill overrun by trash and avoided even by local residents, hoping to spot the rare Darwin's caracara bird. The visit would later cost the couple their life, according a report.
Per the New York Post, 70-year-old Leo Schilperoord has been identified as 'patient zero' as the World Health Organisation put the tally of hantavirus cases at eight, including three deaths.
During their five-month South America trip, the Schilperoords reached Argentina in November, visited Chile and Uruguay and then returned to Argentina in late March. The ornithologists decided to visit a landfill four miles outside of Ushuaia, considered a pilgrimage point for birdwatchers. "It's a mountain of waste that today far exceeds the limit initially established by the authorities," Gaston Bretti, a photographer and local guide told Ansa Latina.
The Schilperoords hoped to catch a glimpse of the white-throated caracara, which was nicknamed after biologist Charles Darwin first found it. This is where they inhaled particles from the feces of long-tailed pygmy rice rats, which carry the Andes strain of hantavirus, per the New York Post.
This was the beginning of a sequence of health scares. Five days after boarding the MV Hondius from Ushuaia, Leo Schilperoord reported having fever, headache, diarrhoea and stomach pain on April 6. He died five days later.
Now feeling unwell herself, Mirjam Schilperoord disembarked from the ship on April 24 during a call at Saint Helena, an island in the south Atlantic. She flew to South Africa's Johannesburg and was to board a KLM flight to the Netherlands, but the crew found her too sick to fly and removed her. She died in hospital a day later, with hantavirus confirmed on May 4. The couple never returned home to their village of 3,000 people.
MV Hondius finally docked at Spain's Canary Islands on Sunday to conduct a complex repatriation operation following stringent testing. 94 passengers and crew of 19 different nationalities were flown out. After refuelling, the ship is scheduled to depart for the Netherlands at 7 pm local time (1800 GMT) with a skeleton crew.
Eight cases have been confirmed and two are listed as "probable", according to the UN's top health body and certain national health authorities, with citizens of six countries affected. Three people have died, with two of those confirmed as having hantavirus and one probable case. Health officials have insisted that the risk to global public health is low and dismissed comparisons to the Covid-19 pandemic.
