Argentina’s health ministry announced it will begin testing rodents for hantavirus as concerns grow over the deadly outbreak aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship — as cases of the rare strain increased by a startling 86% in the country last year.

The ministry said the vermin trapping and testing will take place in the southern city of Ushuaia — where health officials believe the outbreak may have originated.

Argentine officials said a now-deceased Dutch couple picked up a rare strain of the virus from rodents while visiting a landfill during a bird-watching tour in the city of Ushuaia — just days before they boarded the cruise on March 20.

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Follow the latest updates on the hantavirus outbreak stemming from the MV Hondius cruise ship

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The strain, called the Andes virus, can spread between humans and carries a 40% mortality rate.

“Prior to boarding the ship, the first two cases had traveled through Argentina, Chile and Uruguay on a birdwatching trip, which included visits to sites where the species of rat that is known to carry Andes virus was present,” the WHO’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press conference Thursday.

Authorities previously said that the area and the surrounding province of Tierra del Fuego had never recorded a case of the hantavirus.

Argentina’s health ministry said there were 28 deaths in the country from hantavirus last year, up from an average mortality rate of 15 in the five years before that. Nearly a third of its total 86 cases last year were fatal, it said.

With Post Wires