Nine students court allowed to leave isolation in Mallorca now test positive

PalmaNine of the students released from isolation by a court yesterday have tested positive for Covid today. They are part of the large group forced to isolate at hotel Palma Bellver in Mallorca by the regional government, as they were in close contact with the massive outbreak among young holiday-makers on the island. Yesterday afternoon, and after the court ruling came through considering the measures "disproportionate" and putting an end to their mandatory quarantine, six tested positive. Another tested positive in the evening and two more did so in the morning. The infection of these last cases has been confirmed thanks to a voluntary screening that the Balearic Ministry of Health carried out before they got on a ship to Valencia.

According to the Health Service's director of management and budgets, Manuel Palomino, about thirty of the 181 young people who were able to leave isolation thanks to the court decision agreed to undergo screening. Right now there remain 78 infected mainland Spaniards in Mallorca, and the positivity rate among the nearly 5,000 youths linked to the mass outbreak of end-of-year tips has risen to 35.3%.

Early this Thursday students who were in isolation have started returning to the mainland. Some of them had tested negative on a PCR test, while other had not taken it. After Wednesday's court ruling, the Government decided to hire a boat to transport them to Valencia so that each autonomous community could make itself responsible for taking them home. Even so, most of the students left the Palma Bellver hotel on their own, without following the recommendations of the Balearic Government. In addition, 13 more students who had to stay at the hotel have not been located and, presumably, have returned home. They are mainly from Andalusia and Madrid and the Directorate General of Public Health has already informed the affected communities.

According to the latest data, the mass outbreak related to students' end-of-year trips - the largest statewide throughout the pandemic - already affects eleven autonomous communities and has caused at least 1,610 infections, Europa Press reports. The latest cases have been detected in Castilla y León, with 23 infected and 79 close contacts. Madrid is the territory with the most infected, with 662 cases. Galicia has 155, the Basque Country 189, Andalusia 179, Valencia 70, Catalonia 166, Murcia 69, Castilla-La Mancha 19 and Aragon 10. As for Menorca, the number of young Catalans infected amounts to 311.