Forty passengers of an Alitalia flight from the regions of Italy most affected by the epidemic of new coronavirus had to leave for Rome after being prohibited from entering the soil of Mauritius, we learned with the Italian airline. “The 40 passengers concerned are on a return flight to Italy. They are currently in the air and must land at 01:00 (Tuesday),” Paolo Sanguinetti, a spokesperson for Alitalia, told AFP.
“They are on board with other passengers whose flight to Rome was scheduled,” he added.
Alitalia’s plane was stranded when it landed in the morning at Mauritius international airport, according to the Italian Foreign Ministry, which said it was “in constant contact” with the company in order to “ensure a assistance to Italians on board “.
It had taken off from Rome and was transporting around 300 people, including around forty from Lombardy and Veneto (north), two regions affected by the new coronavirus.
The Mauritian Ministry of Health said it had only taken the time to carry out reinforced health checks.
“Several planes landed at SSR (Mauritius) international airport at almost the same time on Monday morning,” a ministry spokesman told AFP.
“If all the passengers on these flights had been authorized to disembark, the medical team of the Ministry of Health could not have managed the situation in relation to the screening tests. It is for this reason that the passengers were slow to get off the planes, “he added.
Passengers finally left the plane at around 12:30 p.m. local time (9:30 a.m.BST), according to a spokesperson for Mauritius airports.
“No passenger with symptoms of Covid-19 has been listed,” said Dr. Vasant Rao Gujadhur, director of health services at the Mauritius Ministry of Health, to AFP.
According to him, only a Mauritian passenger from one of the affected regions of Italy was placed in quarantine as a precaution.
At the end of the afternoon, the government announced that all passengers who had stayed in Lombardy, Veneto or Emilia-Romagna in the past 14 days were no longer allowed to enter Mauritian territory.
The sudden outbreak since Friday of cases of new coronavirus, passed from 6 to 219 in four days, with already six dead, makes Italy the most affected country in Europe and the third in the world after South Korea and the China.
Italy has since multiplied the precautionary measures, including the semi-containment of the approximately 52,000 inhabitants of ten cities in the North.
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