Their flight ended in extremis at the airport ofAmsterdam-Schiphol. The Dutch gendarmerie announced on Sunday evening that they had arrested, in a plane “about to take off” for Spain, a couple who escaped from a hotel where passengers positive for Covid-19 came from
South Africa had been placed in
quarantine.
The couple, made up of a 30-year-old Spaniard and a 28-year-old Portuguese woman, were handed over to the health authorities, according to the gendarmerie. Prosecutions for “endangering public safety” were being launched Sunday evening.
Return to isolation but in different hotels
A spokeswoman for the Dutch health authority, Stefanie van Waardenburg, said the couple were in solitary confinement again, but not in the same hotel. One is positive, the other negative but subject to quarantine. This incident comes after the announcement by the Dutch authorities that 13 people, out of 61 who tested positive for Covid-19 on the arrival of two flights at the airport on Friday, had been contaminated with the new Omicron variant.
The passengers who test positive for Covid are almost all in the same hotel. A handful have been allowed to self-quarantine at home. The negative passengers were also ordered a home quarantine. Police and security guards are standing guard around the quarantine hotel, a spokeswoman for the mayor said.