diff --git a/conf/packages b/conf/packages
index caec25e..434a366 100644
--- a/conf/packages
+++ b/conf/packages
@@ -1,7 +1,5 @@
 postgresql-client
 memcached
-virtualenv
-libapache2-mod-wsgi
-python-dev
+libapache2-mod-wsgi-py3
 python3-dev
 libgdal-dev
diff --git a/conf/pre_deploy_actions.bash b/conf/pre_deploy_actions.bash
index 2179bfd..9a1733e 100755
--- a/conf/pre_deploy_actions.bash
+++ b/conf/pre_deploy_actions.bash
@@ -11,13 +11,12 @@ cd "$(dirname $BASH_SOURCE)"/..
 PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE=""
 
 # create the virtual environment
-virtualenv_args=""
 virtualenv_dir='.venv'
 virtualenv_activate="$virtualenv_dir/bin/activate"
 
 if [ ! -f "$virtualenv_activate" ]
 then
-    virtualenv $virtualenv_args $virtualenv_dir
+    python3 -m venv $virtualenv_dir
 fi
 
 source $virtualenv_activate