Spain hotel with hundreds locked down

Madrid, February 25

A four-star hotel in Spain’s Canary Islands was put on lockdown on Tuesday, its hundreds of guests barred from leaving and staff at reception wore face masks after a coronavirus case was identified there, a hotel guest said.

“We’re told we’re in quarantine due to an Italian doctor testing for the coronavirus. The hotel seems to be acting normally, except that we cannot go out,” one Christopher Betts said over the phone from his room at the hotel. There are police cars stationed at all entrances.

Spanish health authorities said they would test hotel guests and staff. Late on Monday, they had said an Italian doctor in Tenerife on holiday had tested positive for the virus. The man was now in isolation in hospital. He was the third case identified in Spain after a German tourist in La Gomera, another Canary Island, and a British man in Mallorca. “We are checking people who had contact with the patient, including the people in the hotel,” a spokeswoman for the Canary Island’s health department said.

Betts, a British national from Leicestershire, said they had been allowed to have breakfast in the hotel restaurant. “We were originally told to go back to our rooms after breakfast, but we haven’t done so, and everyone else seems to be talking around reception as normal. But unfortunately, no one has any more information as yet, they’re all waiting for the health authorities.”

He said he had not been tested for the virus yet and had missed his flight home. Hotel employees were wearing masks, but none were provided to the guests, Betts said.

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