{"id":233570,"date":"2026-05-16T07:24:51","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T07:24:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/233570\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T07:24:51","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T07:24:51","slug":"hantavirus-patient-zero-was-dutch-ornithologist-leo-schilperoord","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/233570\/","title":{"rendered":"Hantavirus patient zero was Dutch ornithologist Leo Schilperoord"},"content":{"rendered":"

Patient Zero in the cruise ship hantavirus outbreak<\/a> has been identified as ornithologist Leo Schilperoord, whose passion for birds may have cost him his life.<\/p>\n

The 70-year-old man and his wife, Mirjam Schilperoord, 69, were on a five-month trip to South America. They first landed in Argentina on Nov. 27, and traveling through Chile, Uruguay and then back to Argentina in late March, where they went on a fateful birdwatching adventure.<\/p>\n

The couple \u2014 from Haulerwijk, a small village of 3,000 people in the Netherlands \u2014 were identified in obituaries published in their monthly village magazine. <\/p>\n

Ornithologist Leo Schilperoord, 70, has been identified as patient zero in the cruise ship hantavirus outbreak. Leo Schilperoord\/ Facebook<\/p>\n

They co-authored a study on pink-footed geese in the Dutch ornithological magazine Het Vogeljaar<\/a> in 1984 and went on adventures across the world, including an \u201cunforgettable\u201d private 12-day birdwatching and wildlife tour in Sri Lanka in 2013 \u2014 where the couple raved about spotting a rare Serendib Scops Owl.<\/a><\/p>\n

When the Schilperoords returned to Argentina on March 27, they visited a landfill four miles outside the city of Ushuaia. <\/p>\n

The spot, overrun with trash, is avoided like the plague by its residents, but serves as a pilgrimage point for birdwatchers from all over the world in search of a rare creature \u2014 the white-throated caracara, nicknamed Darwin\u2019s caracara after famed evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin, the first to collect it.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the latest on the deadly hantavirus outbreak on the Dutch cruise ship:<\/p>\n

The Ushuaia landfill is where Argentinian authorities suspect the Dutch couple inhaled particles from the feces of long-tailed pygmy rice rats<\/a>, which carry the feared Andes strain of the hantavirus<\/a> \u2014 the only form known to transmit from human to human.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is common for birdwatchers to visit landfills because there are many birds there,\u201d Gast\u00f3n Bretti, a photographer and local guide told Ansa Latina<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Ushuaia landfill is a pilgrimage spot for bird enthusiasts in search of the rare \u201cDarwin\u2019s caracara.\u201d Getty Images<\/p>\n

Ushuaia is on the southern edge of Tierra del Fuego, in Patagonia, and is known as the \u201csouthernmost city in the world.\u201d Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a mountain of waste that today far exceeds the limit initially established by the authorities,\u201d he said of the unsightly place.<\/p>\n

Four days later, on April 1, the couple embarked on the MV Hondius from Ushuaia, along with 112 others, many of whom were also bird watchers or scientists. On April 6, Leo reported having a fever, headache, stomach pain and diarrhea. He died on the ship five days later.<\/p>\n

The Ushuaia landfill is a pilgrimage for birdwatchers in search of the white-throated caracara \u2013 Darwin\u2019s caracara. Daniel Jara \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

The feared Andes strain of the hantavirus is the only one known to transmit from human to human. AP<\/p>\n

Mirjam got off the ship, along with Leo\u2019s body, on April 24, during a planned stop on the Atlantic island of Santa Helena. She flew to Johannesburg in South Africa and transferred on a KLM flight bound for the Netherlands but never made it. The crew found her too sick to fly and removed her. She collapsed at the airport and died the next day.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike birds in flight,\u201d read one of the obituaries published in Dutch in the April issue of the Haulerwijk magazine<\/a>. \u201cWe will miss you and the stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

At least seven Americans from the MV Hondius were on Mirjam\u2019s Airlink flight to Johannesburg on April 25 and are back in the United States. They include two New Jersey residents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Patient Zero in the cruise ship hantavirus outbreak has been identified as ornithologist Leo Schilperoord, whose passion for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[14414,17781,16004,86145,34202,9,11,10,30691,58,3731,1076],"class_list":["post-233570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-argentina","tag-birds","tag-cruises","tag-hantavirus","tag-netherlands","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-patients","tag-us-news","tag-virus","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}