Greece-to-uk tourist flight spreads virus

British authorities say 16 coronavirus cases have been linked to a flight that brought U.K. tourists back from Greece, and everyone aboard has been told to isolate themselves for two weeks.

Public Health Wales said it is contacting almost 200 people who were aboard the Tui flight from the Greek island of Zante to Cardiff, Wales, last Tuesday.

Gwen Lowe of Public Health Wales said 30 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in the past week among people who returned from Zante on several flights. She says the number is expected to rise.

The United Kingdom requires people arriving from abroad to quarantine for two weeks unless they are coming from one of more than 70 countries and territories considered at low risk from the coronavirus. Greece is on the exemption list.

In Australia, meanwhile, Monday was its deadliest day of the pandemic, and the government urged hot-spot Victoria state to announce its plans to lift a lockdown on the country’s second-largest city.

Victoria’s health department reported 41 deaths from COVID-19 and 73 new infections in the previous 24-hour period. Although the number of deaths was a national high, the tally of new infections was Victoria’s lowest since 67 were recorded on June 30 in the early weeks of the nation’s second wave of the pandemic, which has concentrated largely in the state capital, Melbourne.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said only eight of the 41 deaths occurred in the latest 24-hour period. The other 33 occurred in senior-citizen care sites since late July and were reported on Sunday after a tightening of reporting obligations and a review of previous reporting, Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said.

A six-week lockdown in the city is due to be relaxed on Sept. 13, but the state government has not given details or any assurance that it won’t be extended.

Victoria has recorded more than 19,000 infections, almost 80% of Australia’s

more than 25,000 cases, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University. The state also accounts for the vast majority of Australia’s more than 650 deaths.

In Norway, at least 27 people were hospitalized after being poisoned at a rave party by carbon monoxide given off by portable generators, Norwegian media reported. Police said Monday that two people faced preliminary charges of trespassing and illegally being inside a bunker in the capital, Oslo.

Five of the people hospitalized were in critical condition — including two police officers who were the first at the scene — but their lives are not in danger, the Norwegian news agency NTB said.