Spanish officials have put 1,000 people staying at a plush hotel in the Canary Islands under quarantine after one of its guests tested positive to a preliminary check for the coronavirus, according to local media.
More than 1,000 holidaymakers are confined to their rooms in the four-star Hotel H10 Costa Adeje Palace on the island of Tenerife, reported The Local.
The man who fell sick was a doctor visiting from Lombardy, Italy, the center of Europe’s worst outbreak.
The Italian man reported himself to the health authorities on Monday afternoon after experiencing flu-like symptoms. He had been staying at the hotel for a week with his wife, according to the Diario de Avisos newspaper.
He was taken to Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria Hospital, on Tenerife, where he tested positive for the virus. Canary Islands president Ángel Víctor Torres tweeted that he will be tested again in Madrid.
The new diagnosis closely follows massive seasonal sandstorms that hit the islands over the weekend. Víctor Torres called the events a “nightmare weekend” after hundreds of flights were grounded, trapping tourists.
With 467 rooms according to Oyster.com, the Hotel H10 Costa Adeje Palace is likely to have been operating at nearly full capacity when the coronavirus alert was raised.
A spokesperson for H10 hotels said in a statement that the company “implemented all health and operational recommendations from the health authorities to ensure the safety and well being of customers and employees.”
According to the Spanish Ministry of Health, the infected man will take his secondary tests at the National Center of Microbiology of the Carlos III Health Institute in Madrid.
The ministry said it was activating the same coronavirus measures it used for Spain’s two previous cases of the coronavirus.
Both were connected to the tourist industry. The first case was a German tourist who was taken ill in La Gomera, another of the Canary Islands, according to The Local.
Another, on the Balearic island of Mallorca, was a British man whose infection was traced back to Singapore, via a group of tourists he met in a French chalet, reported the outlet.
