ARCHIVED - 570 cases in student holiday outbreak; government calls for cancellation of Balearic Islands trips

Most of the students who caught Covid at parties on the island in the Balearics live in Madrid, but cases have also been reported in Galicia, the Basque Country, Aragón, Valencia and Murcia.

The number of positive cases linked to a massive coronavirus outbreak among students who went on end-of-academic-year getaways to Mallorca has now reached 518, the health authorities have confirmed (Madrid 320; Galicia 50; Basque Country 49; Valencia 67; Murcia 20; Aragón 10).

The Ministry of Health and regional health departments decided at an emergency meeting on Thursday to test all students for the virus who have been on (or are still on) holidays in Mallorca and stayed at the affected hotels between June 12 and 18 to celebrate having finished their studies and put them into quarantine as a precaution.

Moreover, the government has called for students who have trips to Mallorca booked but have yet to travel to cancel, as it considers there to be a high risk of transmission in the environment where the infections occurred.  

Meanwhile, there has been another smaller outbreak in Catalonia among students who went on similar trips to Menorca between 12-18 June. So far 24 cases have been reported and 40 students are under surveillance, the Catalan health authorities have said. 

The outbreak does not appear to be linked to the Mallorca outbreak, but is raising concerns as to what the near future may bring, particularly as the UK has just put the Balearics onto the green watchlist for summer travel as it is considered a safe destination!.  

In Murcia 20 cases have been confirmed and 164 people have been obliged to quarantine; in the Valencia region there are now 67 positive cases and in Andalucía 476 young people are in quarantine.

The students all gave a negative PCR test before travelling, and once on the island  partied "as though there was no covid as we thought we were safe", said one student in the national media.

Although there were no discos open, the students gathered together for open-air botellón drinking sessions, mixing freely without masks, in groups of up to two thousand people according to many reports on TV and in the Spanish media, as well as attending a music festival; on the first night up to two thousand people danced and mingled without masks. By the second night the authorities had been advised of the "descontrol" or lack of control and attendees were obliged to remain seated as the law states, but according to attendees, this didn´t prevent mixing and music both before and after the event.

Many students have also spoken about the partying on the seven hour ferry journey to the island before they reached their destination.