The Secretary of State for Health, Javier Padilla, has censured the decision of the President of the Government of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, to prevent the anchoring in Tenerife of the cruise ship MV Hondius, affected by a hantavirus outbreak. Padilla has accused him of "doing politics to boycott an operation of global importance".
In a live intervention on the program La Sexta Xplica, Padilla has questioned the arguments put forward by the Canarian president and has stressed that the scenario he presents does not respond to a real risk. "That idea he had of an infected mouse jumping from a boat to swim 200 meters and climb the dock to colonize Tenerife is not a risk," he pointed out, defending the specialists' criteria.
The Secretary of State has insisted that the reports from maritime health officials support that the people traveling on the MV Hondius "are asymptomatic" and that "there are no rodents on the boat, which is new". He added that the animal acting as a reservoir for hantavirus "is from the mountains, not the sea" and gave as an example that "every year there are 500 cruises to Argentina and Chile and there has never been an outbreak in Europe".
Padilla has stressed that the health risk derived from the presence of MV Hondius is "remote" and has defended the device activated around the anchoring of the ship in Tenerife. He has underlined that the deadlines and steps being followed comply with the established protocols within the European civil protection mechanism, in an operation in which 23 countries participate and which, as he has remarked, is being carried out "in record time".
The statements of the Secretary of State are produced as a direct response to what was stated minutes before by Fernando Clavijo, who had reiterated that he will not allow the anchoring of the cruise ship MV Hondius in Tenerife to "not be an accomplice to something that endangers the health security" of the archipelago.
The Canarian president has criticized "the lack of dialogue" with the central government and has denounced "the lack of delivery of reports and logical explanations" about the clinical situation of the ship's passengers, to whom he has expressed "all his support".
Along the same lines, Clavijo has insisted that his Executive does not have guarantees that accredit a "zero risk" and has specified that it is being guided by the reports of the regional health authorities, "who advise that the ship be in Canarian waters for the shortest possible time."