Isha Sesay
A TOTAL of six employees at a hotel in Mallorca have tested positive for coronavirus.
The Ministry of Health revealed that an outbreak had been detected among staff working at the Iberostar Club Cala Barca in Santanyi.
According to the Ministry, the first positive case was detected on Monday leading to a contact tracing study to be carried out by IB-Salut.
This resulted in five further employees testing positive for COVID-19, with 50 more staff members taking the test on Thursday.
The outbreak was confirmed by Iberostar’s communication director, Inmaculada Benito, who said the infected employees have now been isolated in empty rooms at the hotel.
Benito explained that the quarantined staff are all asymptomatic and that two of the group’s assistant directors would be ‘taking care of their needs for the next two weeks.’
Probed on whether tourists staying at the hotel would also be tested, Benito said that this is being studied and ‘would depend on if the infected staff had close contact with the clientele.’
“If the employees followed the sanitary measures there may not have been any contagion, however, we are closely monitoring if any tourist presents symptoms of the virus,” said Benito.
He also noted the possibility of closing the hotel but explained that this would be ‘extremely difficult’ due to the ‘outbreak being detected in the middle of the season and with more than a thousand clients staying.’
According to the Diario de Mallorca, the infected employees work in the hotel’s restaurant and therefore would have been in close contact with holidaymakers.
It comes as nine outbreaks of coronavirus have been detected in the Balearics this week, leading to 68 people testing positive.
Breaking down the number by island, seven have been detected in Mallorca with one in Ibiza and another in Menorca.
Meanwhile, Spain has seen more than 1,000 people test positive for COVID-19 for the second day in a row.
Registering 1,229 cases in the past 24 hours, it had the highest daily count in the European Union yesterday.
It is also the highest recorded daily count since the height of the pandemic on April 30, which saw 1,309 new cases in a 24-hour period.
