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Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome is a zoonosis with a high fatality rate. Infection usually occurs by inhalation of aerosolized rodent secreta or excreta; however, a variant in Argentina — the Andes virus (ANDV) — has been associated with person-to-person transmission. In 2018 and 2019, an outbreak of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome occurred among 34 persons in an Andean village in southwestern Argentina. Next-generation sequence analysis of samples from 27 patients showed that the infections were all caused by an ANDV variant and the outbreak began as a single zoonotic spillover to a human.
The first person-to-person transmission occurred when a symptomatic individual attended a gathering with 100 guests. Five persons seated near the index case …