Jacob Lorenzo-Morales
Professor of Parasitology, Director of the University Institute of Tropical Diseases and Public Health of the Canary Islands of the University of La Laguna and CIBERINFEC researcher
In the end it is non-toxigenic V. Chloreae, so there is no cholera, but gastritis. Even so, it is important to make the population aware of common sense and to think that actions such as drinking untreated (non-drinking) water are totally out of place. Today it was a false alarm, another day it could be a more serious case with a much more potent pathogen.
The colleagues of the National Microbiology Centre of the ISCIII, once again, deserve to be applauded for their titanic work and the rapid response and diagnosis they have carried out.
The case has occurred on a farm with non-drinking water. Investigations will now look into the origin (source) of the contamination of this water.
If it had been cholera, the risk to the general population would have been almost nil. As several public health and research officials have already said, with the water quality controls in place in our country, a catastrophe would have to occur for contamination to reach the water supply networks.