Dr Scott Walkin

So the two main offices in Ireland that look after this and coordinate it would include the Health Protection Surveillance Center and the National Health Protection Office.

So they will be developing protocols and have been developing protocols.

And there are already protocols in place for the management of high consequence infectious diseases.

which would include recourse to the National Isolation Unit in the Mater Hospital if necessary.

So a lot of those protocols are in place and they just need to be tweaked and adapted for the particular situation with hantavirus.

And that nuance is being worked on at the moment.

So there are various hantaviruses, but the Andean version is the typical incubation period is around about two weeks, but that can extend out a bit longer, even to five or six weeks.

Well, that's exactly what the protocols are being developed to consider and to work out how to manage that.

Because you're right, I mean, it's a long time.

I think watching brief is probably the most important thing to find out how this evolves.

And I think the information will become clearer.

But I completely agree that there's no need for panic about this because the chances of transmissibility are small.

It's not zero, but it's small.

It's certainly not anything like the flu or COVID-19 or chickenpox or any of these very transmissible conditions.

Is there any treatment for this?

So the treatment largely is about managing, supporting the person until their immune system fights off the infection.

So if there's breathing problems, as there can be with this particular variant, their breathing is supported with oxygen and with other medical technology.

So it's largely supportive treatment.

There's no vaccine, no.

No, that's correct.