The ‘Costa Smeralda’ cruise ship, which arrives in Palma on Tuesday can hold 6,600 passengers and crew. A passenger with coronavirus symptoms tested negative. All cruise ships that stop in Palma leave from Italian ports.

The ‘Costa Smeralda’ cruise ship, which arrives in Palma on Tuesday can hold 6,600 passengers and crew. A passenger with coronavirus symptoms tested negative. All cruise ships that stop in Palma leave from Italian ports. | Reuters

Majorca Daily Bulletin reporterInternational25/02/2020 08:41
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Foreign travel reservations have plummeted by 50% in the Balearic Islands in the last year and the slump is being blamed on the continued spread of the coronavirus, according to the President of the Aviba Employer’s Office, Francesc Mulet.

“Activity is at a minimum and in recent days we have registered a demise in reservations at issuing agencies in Majorca. The situation is complicated and everything is at the expense of how events evolve in the short and medium term. There is uneasiness among consumers, which is logical” said Francesc Mulet on Monday.

Every year students from Majorcan schools take study trips or exchange with students in Bologna, Florence and Pisa. But because of the spread of the Covid virus-19 in northern Italy in the last few days the Italian Government has cancelled all study trips and cultural exchanges with European regions including the Balearic Islands, which will have a knock on affect all planned programming for the next two months.

AENA

AENA, which manages 47 airports in Spain says its taking advice from the Ministry of Health and will do whatever is necessary to minimise the risk of coronavirus.

"We are in direct contact with the authorities in order to receive the appropriate instructions to apply the preventive control measures adopted at the airport level in our country and at the community level."

The Health Department says the protocol that was adopted at the end of January to deal with patients who are diagnosed with the virus will remain in place for now and that it’s being kept informed of any new cases in the Balearic Islands and other autonomous regions.

“The instructions will be adopted as the cases of coronavirus evolve in community countries and we are analysing all the latest events in detail,” said the Health Minister, Salvador Illa.

The Health Department says the recent increase in cases of coronavirus in Italy is extremely worrying because a high number of cruise passengers arrive in Barcelona and Palma from Italian ports every day.

The Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, has called for a meeting of the Inter-territorial Council of the National Health System, including Government Health Minister, Patricia Gómez, to discuss and coordinate what measures need to be taken in autonomous communities.

On Monday, the European Centre for Disease Control held a meeting to discuss a unified criteria for all European Union countries.