Naples, May 10 (LaPresse) – “There is currently no cause for alarm; we are certainly far from a pandemic.” This is what Maria Rosaria Campitiello, head of the Ministry of Health’s Department of Prevention, told Rainews24 regarding the hantavirus situation. “We’re talking about a virus that is very different from Covid, albeit more lethal,” explained Campitiello. "The fundamental difference lies in its contagiousness: it is a low-contagious virus; its main transmission is through rodent excreta—specifically saliva, urine, and feces—and only to a very small extent via airborne and person-to-person transmission. We certainly have a rather long incubation period, so it is absolutely correct to recommend precautionary isolation precisely because the incubation period is long and symptoms may appear, but it must also be noted that recent studies suggest contagion does not begin in the pre-clinical phase but only when symptoms appear." Campitiello reiterated, as he did yesterday, that the four passengers on a KLM flight that passed through Rome—and on which a woman who later died of hantavirus had boarded for a few minutes in Johannesburg—“show no symptoms.” The four, who are all doing well, were reported by the Ministry of Health to the regions of Veneto, Calabria, Campania, and Tuscany, which have been conducting active surveillance since yesterday morning.