An Italian man has tested positive for coronavirus in Tenerife in the Canary Islands, the region’s health authorities said on Monday. Spanish media including El Mundo reported the man was an Italian doctor on holiday in Spain.
There are also reports that 1,000 people at the H10 Costa Adeje Palace hotel where he was staying, and popular with British tourists, have been put into quarantine. Police have been seen outside making sure nobody enters or leaves and phone calls to the hotel have gone answered.
The patient is currently being kept in isolation and his test results will be sent to Madrid for a second analysis, as per Spain’s protocol in suspected coronavirus cases, the Canary Islands’ health authorities said in a statement.
He is from the Lombardy region of Italy where several people have died and is thought to have been staying at the hotel with his wife for seven days.
Canary Islands president Angel Victor Torres said: ‘This afternoon the coronavirus protocol has been activated for an Italian tourist in the south of Tenerife.
‘The result from the first test carried out in the Canaries is positive. Tomorrow new tests will take place in Madrid. The patient has been quarantined.’
A spokesman for the regional health authority added: ‘The protocol states that a second test must take place at the National Microbiology Centre at the Carlos III Health Institute in Madrid.
‘The patient has been quarantined and is under the care of health workers.’
He is the third person to test positive for the virus in Spain after a British man in Mallorca on February 9 and a German man on the Canary Island of La Gomera on February 1.
Many tourists to the island were this week prevented from leaving earlier this week because of a huge sand storm that was so big it could be seen from space.
Among them are tourists who were staying at the hotel and had to extend their stay because flights were grounded until the weather improved.
Additional reporting by Gerard Couzens
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