News: Iceland has made a mistake with Chikungunya virus infection in Alicante.

Ten days ago the news came out that three Icelandic tourists who were on holiday in the city of Alicante between 17 and 31 May had been infected with the Chikungunya virus.

This virus was probably caused by the bites of a tiger mosquito. The alarm was raised immediately, but now it appears that the Icelandic specialists were mistaken and that there is no infection.

Due to a technical error in a laboratory in Iceland, the three tourists who became ill after a visit to Alicante were not properly diagnosed and they were three 'false positives' (falsos positivos) of the Chikungunya virus. From Iceland it was reported that both human and technical errors can be made in the detection of diseases and viruses. In this case, it turned out to be a technical error, which was immediately communicated to the Spanish authorities.

Contamination

According to the report of 15 June, three Icelandic tourists from the same family had been infected with the Chikungunya virus. This was a 37-year-old mother who, after returning from a holiday in Alicante in her town of Reykjavik (Iceland), was admitted to hospital and tested positive for the Chikungunya virus, but negative for the zika and dengue viruses.

One of her sisters and her 5-year-old son had similar symptoms and they were also tested positive for the Chikungunya virus. Another sister who lives in Norway could have been infected but that was not confirmed.

Virus

The chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is a virus that causes chikungunya disease with mild fever and joint pain as a result. Normally the disease is not fatal for humans but one can suffer from the following symptoms: sudden onset of fever, chills, conjunctivitis, back pain, headache and/or severe arthralgia (mainly affects wrists, knees, ankles and small joint limbs).

The virus can be transmitted by mosquito bites from the Aedes aegypti mosquito (dengue mosquito) and by the Aedes albopictus (Asian tiger mosquito) which occurs in many places in the province of Alicante and in the autonomous region of Valencia.