James Warren
THE Ministry of Health Emergencies is putting measures into place to prevent outbreaks of the Corona virus that is currently taking hold of China.
The Spanish health services are introducing protocols to recognise and isolate cases of mysterious pneumonia diagnosis potentially caused by the nCoV virus.
The Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, has released a statement urging the public to remain calm and that the likelihood of the virus to emerge in Spain is low.
“The impact on public health, in the event of detecting a case imported into our country is considered very low since, if person-to-person transmission of the virus occurs, it is limited and associated with close contact,” explained Illa.
He also indicated that Spain has the resources to deal with any potential cases of the virus in his message of “tranquillity and confidence”.
The Spanish health Department has indicated that the chances of contamination are low due to no direct flights to Wuhan, China, the city at the centre of the virus outbreak.
Despite this, Spanish airport authorities have been specifically trained to notice potential symptoms of the virus and are conducting increased checks of travellers coming from that part of the world and connecting countries such as the UK, France and Italy.
Throughout the whole situation, the Spanish government has been in close contact with the World Health Organisation to keep them updated on any progress on treatments and alerts.
This new strain of coronavirus started in December 2019 and is thought to have originated at the Wuhan Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market, and rapidly spread throughout the city of Wuhan.
So far, 17 people have died and hundreds have been hospitalised from the virus, thought to now have come from Chinese species of snakes that feed on infected bats and mammals.
