On Monday, the Ministry of Health reported the first outbreak of covid-19 registered in the province of Alicante following the end of the State of Alarm.
It is a family nucleus of four members, all Spanish residents in the fishing town, with the Valencian administration refusing to provide further information in order to maintain anonymity.
Although they are from the same family nucleus, it does not necessarily mean that they are the same family as there may be workers or caregivers among the group that have tested positive.
The Ministry of Health said in their statement that it considers the outbreak to be under control.
The minister, Ana Barceló, said that “the fact that this contagion has occurred in a family environment is positive, since, it is easier to detect the contacts that the patients may have had, isolate them and in this way control the spread of the virus.”
According to health sources, two people from this same family nucleus tested positive on Friday when they were diagnosed as having mild symptoms compatible with covid-19. This was confirmed by the PCR test, the most effective test that is currently available.
During the tracking procedure, another PCR test was carried out on the other members of the family nucleus, and at the weekend two more were found to have tested positive. At the moment th tracking process between family and close contacts is continuing with the four infected cases, all with mild symptoms, in quarantine.
The tracking team continues to look for the ‘footprints’ of the coronavirus and will do so until it finds the origin of the contagion.
The Elche General Hospital, which includes the municipality of Santa Pola in its dependency, has assigned 13 nurses to the tracking team, who are distributed across the health area. They have been helping to carry out the PCR tests in the Santa Pola health centre, the Altabix Health centre and the hospital itself.
