Well it’s already here. After passing through Cavo Verde, the MV Hondius cruise ship heads to the Granadilla de Abona anchoragein Tenerife. It’s a huge mess (including infected animals, ships isolated for weeks, and very bad luck), but it’s certainly not a surprise.
Although europe’s emergency response is working well, no european country had specific protocols, nor own diagnostic capacity for a virus that has been causing problems since 2018 and has been in an ‘active outbreak’ in Argentina since 2025.
What is happening. Under the solidity of the emergency response and humanitarian discourses, a clear problem is hidden: European surveillance and its response protocols are calibrated for local hantaviruses, but not for an emerging pathogen from the Southern Cone that has been mutating for years, expanding towards northern Argentina and doubling its historical lethality.
And that, in a context like the current one, is unjustified clumsiness.
What happens with the virus? In Argentina, the Andes is an old acquaintance. It is about the only hantavirus variant in which “transmission between people has been described, although this phenomenon is rare and usually requires close and prolonged contact.”
Therefore, the Ministry of Health comes defending that, whatever happens with the cruise, “the risk for the general population is very low and remember that interpersonal transmission of the Andean hantavirus is extremely rare.”
All of this is true and explains, in part, the situation. That is, the little interest that the virus has generated in the public health agencies of the old continent. What happens is that, in addition to being true, it is somewhat partial: the reality is that, despite the difficulties it has in getting infected, the Andes is leaving its Patagonian niche towards more populated areas. In Buenos Aires, 42 cases have been detected this season and A 10-year-old girl died on January 8 in General Belgrano.
The clue that something is changing has a much better indicator: the second province with the most cases It is Salta, in the northvery far from the Patagonian region.
The other indicator is lethality. Because yes, although we are talking about very few cases, the lethality is also changing. The history varies depending on the year and region, but there was a certain consensus that it was around 20%. In 2025 (partial consolidated data) rose to 33.6% with 28 deaths out of 86 cases. The 2025-2026 season confirms the trend (31.7%)
No one is very clear why this is happening; there are theories that speak of an improvement in the notification of cases and others that speak of greater virulence. Data from the largest recent outbreak (that of 2018) do not allow us to opt for any option.
Should we be worried? As the Ministry said and all the experts agree, the diagnosis is unequivocal: “the risk for the European population is very low.” Human-to-human transmission is very rare (and requires close and prolonged contact), management appears good, and there are no animal reservoirs for these viruses.
What happens is that the Hondius case It is a clear example of something that we have been considering for years: that the ‘era of epidemics’ has not only begun, it is operating at full capacity.
All the factors driving the emergence of pandemic diseases have become more robust since COVID: in 2024, global air traffic exceeded 4,890 million passengers108% of the pre-pandemic level; and forest degradation in the tropics has risen 163% between 2022 and 2024. Meanwhile, population density in problem areas continues to grow and climate change continues to expand transmission vectors.
If the question is what can we do...the answer is a lot, although almost everything is unsexy. The general feeling is that we have been forgetting all the lessons we learned during the pandemic.
Image | Manuel
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