The Spanish health minister is set to chair a ministerial discussion on Spain’s response to the outbreak.
Rabat – Spain has confirmed its first case of the coronavirus (2019 n-Cov) after diagnosing a man with the virus in La Gomera in the Canary Islands on Friday.
Spanish media reported that the patient is a German national who is now in isolation in the Hospital Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe in the Canaries.
Spanish authorities said that an alert was activated after they heard that two German tourists had been in contact with an infected patient in Germany before visiting the Canary Islands.
The two German nationals had also been staying with three other people on the island, El Pais reports.
Spain’s National Centre for Microbiology in Madrid said that it had received five samples from La Gomera, and only one tested positive.
Meanwhile, a plane transporting 27 EU nationals coming from the outbreak’s epicenter in Wuhan, China, landed in Madrid. The plane carried four Danish nationals and one Norwegian who were repatriated to their countries.
Read also: UK Confirms First Cases of Coronavirus as Outbreak Spreads
Spain quarantined the remaining Spaniards in a military hospital in Madrid as a preventive measure. They will remain in quarantine for 14 days.
With as many as 11,821 people infected with 2019-nCov in China, the death toll reached 259 as of Friday, January 31.
Outside of China, health officials diagnosed about 100 cases of the coronavirus.
On Thursday, the World Health Organization declared the Wuhan coronavirus a global health emergency, as the outbreak continues to spread beyond China.
