By Isabel Debre BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Officials in Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego province are challenging the idea that the ongoing deadly hantavirus outbreak may have emerged there, pushing instead for investigations into the other Argentine provinces that passengers visited before boarding the ill-fated Atlantic cruise ship. Current and former officials in the archipelago at the southernmost point of South America insist that the virus did not originate from the trash heap in Ushuaia that national health authorities named earlier this week as the most likely place two Dutch tourists contracted it while bird-watching. “I believe we are facing a smear campaign against this destination,” Juan Facundo Petrina, the province’s director of epidemiology, told reporters Friday in a press conference from Ushuaia. Federal officials didn’t contact local authorities initially…
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