AN INQUIRY into an outbreak of swine flu in Spain has been ordered after children were unnecessarily exposed to the virus.
Defence minister Carme Chacón ordered the inquiry into an outbreak at the Hoyo de Manzanares base, a military academy near Madrid, where there have been 18 confirmed cases of A/H1N1 flu. A further 81 people are awaiting test results. All cases are said to be mild.
Ms Chacón’s inquiry is attempting to find out why the military authorities apparently took until last Friday before officially reporting the outbreak, although the first case was confirmed last Monday. During those four days two groups of school children visited the academy, and could have been exposed to the virus.
Some 500 people in the military engineering school have been confined to barracks.It is not known how the soldiers contracted the virus, since none of them is known to have visited Mexico recently. Most other persons in Spain with the illness had been in Mexico shortly before becoming ill.
These cases bring the number of reported victims in Spain to 145.
The opposition Popular Party (PP) has demanded Ms Chacón’s resignation. “She covered up the flu outbreak in the military academy and only later visited it accompanied by photographers,” said PP leader Mariano Rajoy.
Prime minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said: “They [PP] demand the minister’s resignation because a few soldiers have caught flu, but they continue to defend Trillo over the Yak-42 affair. How can they be serious?”
Last week, former defence minister Federico Trillo refused to resign from parliament after a general and two officers were jailed over a cover-up regarding the fate of a Yak-42 plane carrying 62 Spanish soldiers from Afghanistan six years ago, which crashed in Turkey killing all on board.
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