Dutch border police arrested a pair of partners before a plane took off on November 28, local time. The couple previously flew to the Netherlands from South Africa and was quarantined in the hotel because their colleagues were diagnosed with the novel coronavirus variant, Omikron. Then they escaped from the hotel and wanted to fly to Spain.
AFP quoted Dutch police sources to report that the arrested partners were a 30-year-old Spanish man and a 28-year-old Portuguese woman, who were initially quarantined in the same quarantine hotel. One of them was infected with the novel coronavirus, and it was not clear whether he was infected with the Omikron variant; the other tested negative for the virus.
They flew from Johannesburg, South Africa, to Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, on the 26th. There was another flight on the same route that day. 61 of the 600 people on board the two flights tested positive for the novel coronavirus, 13 of whom were infected with the Omikron variant.
After arriving in the Netherlands, the vast majority of people who tested positive for the virus on these two flights were sent to hotels guarded by police and security guards for quarantine, and a few were allowed to stay at home.
The Dutch police have transferred the couple to the health department and started to prosecute them with the public prosecutor’s office for crimes against public security. The two are currently quarantined in different hotels. It is not clear how they escaped from previously quarantined hotels and how they were reported.
Dutch border police spokesman Stan Fairbet said the couple was arrested on a plane about to take off. Their plane was originally scheduled to take off at about 6 p.m. that night for Spain.
