Netherlands
The couple flees the quarantine hotel – and is now isolated in the clinic
The couple were arrested in a plane at Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands.
© ROBIN UTRECHT / Picture Alliance
You tested positive for Corona and should wait for the quarantine in a hotel in the Netherlands. But a couple from South Africa had other plans and tried to flee by plane.
After escaping from a quarantine hotel in the Netherlands, a couple is now quarantined in a clinic. “You are now in a place where you are isolated, in a hospital,” said a spokesman for the border police at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol on Monday. The number of returnees from South Africa who tested positive and infected with the new Omicron variant of the coronavirus has meanwhile increased to 14.
The fugitive couple, a Spaniard and her Portuguese boyfriend, were caught on Sunday by border police on a plane that was supposed to fly to Spain. The two had previously fled from a hotel in which travelers from South Africa who tested positive for the corona virus are staying, some of whom the new Omikron variant had been found.
“We heard that people had left the hotel even though they had been advised against it. So we had to act and arrested them,” said border police spokesman Robert van Kapel of the AFP news agency. A spokeswoman for the Haarlemmermeer municipality confirmed that the couple are now “in a hospital in the Netherlands”.
61 travelers from South Africa in the quarantine hotel
“These people were asked once to stay in the hotel, then they were asked a second time urgently, now they are isolated. What they did was not really wise,” said spokeswoman Petra Faber. In the Netherlands, it is not illegal to go outside after a positive corona test. “But when you get on a plane and you know you’re infected, it’s a different story,” added Faber.
The Dutch authorities announced at the weekend that 13 of 61 travelers who arrived at Schiphol Airport on Friday in two planes from South Africa were infected with the new Omikron variant. On Monday, the number of Omikron infected people increased to 14. Health Minister Hugo de Jonge announced to parliament that the 14th case was confirmed by what is known as sequencing.
Almost all affected passengers were taken to the quarantine hotel near the airport. Some others were also allowed to quarantine home. Passengers who tested negative were also sent to home quarantine.
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