Press conference of the Secretary of State for Health of the Spanish government to report on the hantavirus outbreak

The Secretary of State for Health of the Spanish government, Javier Padilla, and the Secretary General of Civil Protection and Emergencies, Virginia Barcones, will appear this Friday to explain the latest developments in the hantavirus outbreak, with only a few hours left until the affected ship, with about 150 people on board, reaches the vicinity of the Canary port of Granadilla de Abona. The protocol established by the health authorities has determined that the cruise ship will not dock and will remain anchored offshore, from where passengers and crew will be evacuated once they have been examined. The Spanish government has insisted that foreigners will be repatriated to their countries directly, even if they have symptoms compatible with the infection, while the 14 Spaniards (including five Catalans) are expected to be examined and transferred by a medicalized plane to the military base of Torrejón de Ardoz. With all safety measures in place to avoid any risk, Health's forecast is that the entire group will voluntarily agree to be admitted to the Gómez Ulloa military hospital in Madrid to undergo quarantine for an as-yet undetermined period, even though the incubation period for hantavirus ranges from one to six weeks. At present, all Spaniards are well and do not present symptoms compatible with the disease. The WHO has also insisted that the Andean strain of hantavirus, although capable of transmission between humans, is only contagious through close contact, saliva or respiration, thus emphasizing that it has nothing to do with the spread of covid, a virus that, moreover, was completely unknown unlike the one responsible for the current outbreak.