They can say no: the quarantine of the 14 Spaniards from the hantavirus cruise is voluntary

BarcelonaThe 14 Spaniards on board the cruise ship MV Hondius will undergo quarantine at the Gómez Ulla Military Hospital only if they agree and do so voluntarily. As happened with the COVID-19 crisis, the current legal framework prevents mandatory confinement in cases where there are no symptoms, as is the case with this group, without judicial authorization. At the moment, no one knows what will happen to these passengers once the ship docks at the Canary Islands port, where External Health personnel will assess them before they are transferred by an air ambulance to the Torrejón de Ardoz base. The Spanish government has everything prepared so that, once in Madrid, they will be admitted to the medical center, but with the law in hand they can decide to go home or even not respect the isolation period advised to stop infections.

The Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, has contradicted what the Minister of Health, Mónica García, announced on Wednesday, and has questioned the mandatory nature of quarantines. Furthermore, she explained that patients are not expected to be admitted to the infectious disease units of the military hospital, as was the case with Ebola patients in 2014. Simply, they are expected to be in individual rooms, according to Robles, who assured that the two ministries are working on the preparation of the air ambulance that will take the group of passengers from Gran Canaria to Madrid. The question is what will happen from then on if these people remain asymptomatic. Hantavirus has an incubation period that ranges from one week to six weeks, but for now the authorities have not indicated the duration of the quarantine.

Robles insisted that they will only undergo quarantine at the hospital "if they voluntarily wish to do so," as it is a measure that deprives them of their liberty and can only be ordered by the judiciary. At this point, Minister García appealed "to the common sense and responsibility" of the Spanish passengers and assured that if they do not wish to enter Gómez Ulla, the Spanish government reserves the right to apply the necessary legal measures for them to enter.

In statements to Cadena SER, the head of Health explained that law 3/1986 on special measures in public health matters grants health authorities the power to apply exceptional measures to protect public health and control communicable diseases. "We will perform PCR tests and all necessary tests and will be evaluating together with international experts what the quarantine is," she pointed out.

During the covid-19 crisis, the Spanish government had to resort to declaring an exceptional state of alarm to decree mass confinements, as the text of the 1986 law does not include such a drastic and widespread measure, and it allowed the executive to take sole command of crisis management. Since the pandemic, the debate about modifying this 40-year-old law has been raised, but the lack of political consensus has prevented its updating to avoid new controversies in case an epidemic were to restrict fundamental rights again, such as the prohibition of mobility.