Christine Loescher

Sure.

And I mean, at late stage, when somebody gets very ill with the virus, it's really a respiratory and a cardiac issue.

So it's really oxygen support and ICU care that somebody would get when they become very sick.

So

there isn't a specific antiviral, there isn't a vaccine, there isn't a specific treatment, but really good respiratory care is really the focus.

I think it's going to be closer to the end of May.

I think that, you know, we have to understand that, you know, when people, the earlier cases on the cruise ship,

you know, they were dealt with in a way that maybe they just deal with the normal virus on a cruise ship.

They didn't know what they were dealing with.

So it's really hard to try and get a handle on what the level of exposure of the rest of the passengers were on the ship and what the last time of exposure is.

The way the HSE are dealing with this under the kind of guidance of the WHO is that they're taking the start of May as the last potential time of exposure and they're exerting caution and saying it's 42 to 45 days from there.

in terms of quarantine and in terms of ongoing monitoring of the patient.

So while the 19th of May takes into consideration, I think they're really basing that on previous outbreaks where the incubation time has been about 28 days and that might be the case in this situation, but the fact that it can incubate for up to 45 days and because we've just come out of a pandemic and because we know the mortality rate is really high if somebody gets it, I think there's been a lot of caution exerted here

And I think understandably so, not just for the people involved, but also I think public concern and public perception is really playing into this.

Yeah, and I think, you know, again, we don't know the situation on the cruise ship in terms of what were they exposed to that potentially could have been touched or had a bodily fluid on it from somebody else.

So what did they share in terms of buffets at food time?

What happened in terms of them interacting with one passenger who was close contact with somebody else and then...

You know, it really is to do with how things are transmitted.

And while close contact is the mode of transmission for Hantavirus, particularly the Andes one, which is the only one that can transmit from human to human.

It doesn't mean that a health care worker or a doctor or somebody who was in close contact with the person, if they haven't used infection control precautions sufficiently.