Spain Isolates Tourists in Luxury Tenerife Hotel Amid Virus Fears
Spanish authorities identified five new coronavirus cases and isolated about 1,000 guests and workers at a Canary Island hotel.
(Bloomberg) -- Spanish authorities identified five new coronavirus cases and isolated about 1,000 guests and workers at a Canary Island hotel as it stepped up efforts to contain the spread of the disease.
An Italian tourist and his wife were hospitalized in Tenerife after testing positive in initial tests for the virus, an official from the Canary Islands government said by phone. Their hotel, the H10 Costa Adeje Palace, was sealed off and guests told they couldn’t leave as testing continued.
Three patients in Barcelona, the Valencia region and Madrid were also found to have the virus, the Spanish health ministry said. The Barcelona patient is an Italian woman resident who tested positive after returning from a visit to her home country while the Madrid patient, 24, had traveled in northern Italy, El Mundo newspaper reported.
“Guests will remain at the hotel until the results from the second test come out,” Spanish government spokeswoman Maria Jesus Montero told journalists Tuesday. “Appropriate measures will be taken depending on the results.”
The Italian and his wife are being held in isolation at the Hospital Universitario Nuestra Senora de La Candelaria in Tenerife, and two more people are in observation, according to the region’s healthcare department. The man is a doctor from Lombardy, a region of northern Italy that is a principal focus of the outbreak in Europe, Efe news service reported.
Spanish state broadcaster TVE showed images of notes that had been passed under the doors of hotel guests, asking them to stay in their rooms. Elaine Whitewick, a guest from Keswick in north-western England, posted videos on Facebook showing images of masked Spanish police in the hotel car park.
In Catalonia, authorities are awaiting the results of a second test to confirm the case, according to the region’s health department. The person is a 36-year-old woman who visited northern Italy from Feb. 12 to 22, Catalonia’s health department said in a statement Tuesday.
The woman, who has mild symptoms and no history of serious illness, was admitted to the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona with flu-like symptoms. In total, 25 people who came in close contact with her after her trip to Milan have been asked to stay at home for the next 14 days and are under observation.
A man in Castellon in the Valencia region has also been found to have the virus in an initial test, the government said in a statement late Tuesday.
Spain so far has reported only two confirmed cases of coronavirus, a German citizen in the island of La Gomera in the Canary Islands off western Africa, and a resident in the island of Mallorca in the Mediterranean. Each of them recovered from the illness.
Coronavirus infections worldwide have jumped to more than 80,000, with more than 2,700 deaths, mainly in China. In Italy, which is hit with Europe’s largest outbreak of the virus, seven people have died, at least 283 have been infected and thousands remain in lockdown.
To contact the reporter on this story: Laura Millan Lombrana in Madrid at lmillan4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Aaron Rutkoff at arutkoff@bloomberg.net, Charles Penty, Todd White
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