Trapped in hell hotel
700 Tenerife tourists held in quarantine after Italian guest tests positive for coronavirus
HUNDREDS of Britons are feared to be trapped in a Tenerife hotel that has been placed in lockdown because of a coronavirus outbreak.
Seven hundred guests have been barred from leaving the four- star H10 Costa Adeje Palace Hotel in a desperate attempt to stop the virus spreading.
British tourists described how their trips had turned into a ‘holiday from hell’ after the coastal hotel in the south-west of the island was suddenly shut yesterday morning.
Last night, the hotel announced it was closing until the middle of March.
Bosses say the move is being taken to ‘guarantee the safety of guests and staff’.
The scare was triggered when a doctor from Lombardy, the Italian region at the centre of the health crisis in Europe, fell ill and tested positive. The doctor, whose wife also contracted the virus, is thought to have been staying at the hotel for six days.
Canary Islands president Angel Victor Torres said last night only the ‘hundred and odd’ tourists who had no contact with the Italian couple could leave today.
He added that ‘the others will have to be subject to active individual monitoring’, leaving guests with no idea when they will eventually be able to return home.
Those with symptoms must stay in their rooms until test results return. Those with the virus will be taken to hospital. Others can ‘move freely’ inside the hotel but must take precautions such as using face masks.
Guests expressed concerns yesterday that hundreds of holidaymakers may have come into contact with the infected couple before travelling to their homes across Europe.
The hotel’s external doors were padlocked shut as dozens of police officers guarded its entrances after the alert was triggered.
Letters were placed under the doors of the hotel’s 500 rooms explaining that the hotel had been ‘closed down’ and that guests ‘must remain’ in their rooms. The hotel is hugely popular with British tourists, with tour companies Jet2 and TUI providing package trips – though it remains unclear exactly how many Britons have been trapped inside.
While some holidaymakers were served breakfast in their rooms to enforce the curfew, many others ignored the stay-put advice and started to roam.
Those willing to venture out into the ‘ghost town’ were able to eat breakfast at a buffet and use the hotel’s sun-lounging areas, while a makeshift distribution station was set up for bottled water.
But as chaos gripped the hotel, those who remained inside their rooms complained of going hungry and being forced to survive on snacks, with little information about what was happening.
The owner of a meat company has delivered 1,000 masks and 200 gloves for worried tourists.
As health staff arrived to carry out tests yesterday, a notice attached to the back gate of the building read: ‘Entrance forbidden to people not authorised.’
A British holidaymaker, who recently returned from the hotel, said he had been gripped with worry since returning home.
Officials told Anthony Wilkins, 60, that his stay had coincided with that of the Italian carriers.
But after returning to the UK on a Jet2 flight on Sunday with his girlfriend Sheila Taylor, 47, and her daughters Charlotte and Jess, they have received wildly conflicting advice. The salesman said: ‘The last thing I want is to be blamed for spreading this around.
‘The advice so far has been terrible.’ Mr Wilkins, from Carlisle,
‘The advice has been terrible’
called the NHS 111 number and was told that there is no need to go into ‘self-isolation’ because he had not presented symptoms.
Despite raising concerns, Miss Taylor has been advised to turn up at the NHS hospital where she works as a theatre nurse despite advice from her GP to remain in isolation. Mr Wilkins said: ‘I am 99.9 per cent sure that we don’t have the virus and are not panicking or dramatising. But I don’t want to get on a train and possibly start spreading the virus.’
Holidaymaker Elaine Whitewick, who is away with friend Jayney Brown, shared videos on Facebook showing police outside the hotel. She said: ‘This is what we’ve been offered. Just water. We’ve been told we’ve got to go back to our rooms.’ Nigel Scotland, another guest, estimated that ‘500 or 600 people must have left the hotel and gone back to various places in Europe’ during the infected doctor’s stay. British guest David Hoon, 60, from Matlock, Derbyshire, said: ‘Nobody is telling us what’s going on. The way this has been handled is a disgrace.’
A Foreign Office spokesman said that its staff were offering advice and support to a number of British people at the hotel and their families.