Estimating the Potential Burden of Clinically Significant Hantavirus Cases in Argentina

Cruise ships represent semi-closed environments characterised by relatively high population density, shared communal spaces, and prolonged interpersonal contacts, providing ideal settings for outbreak clusters of human-to-human-transmissible viruses to occur.1 We note that the recent hantavirus outbreak on the cruise ship MV Hondius resulted in fatalities or severe clinical signs among early cases,2 providing a unique statistical signal to estimate the true burden of hantavirus cases presenting severe clinical conditions (hereafter defined as ‘clinically significant hantavirus cases’) in the area in which the index case acquired infection.