A couple was arrested at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport for violating their coronavirus quarantine after they slipped out of their hotel to try to catch a flight to Portugal. At least one of them had tested positive for COVID-19 upon arrival from South Africa just days earlier.
Despite Testing Positive For COVID-19, Couple Escape From Quarantine Hotel In Amsterdam In Attempt To Board Flight To Spain
Beginning last Friday, passengers arriving from South Africa were directed to a special area of Schiphol Airport (AMS) for post-flight testing. Those who tested negative were allowed to continue to their final destination or enter the Netherlands unsupervised with instructions to self-quarantine while those who tested positive were sent home to quarantine (if Dutch citizens or residents) or to quarantine hotels (if foreigners).
Of the more 600 passengers on a pair of KLM flights, one from Johannesburg, the other from Cape Town, about 10% (61 passengers) tested positive for COVID-19. While tracing continues to occur, at least a dozen of those passengers tested positive for the omicron variant.
It is not clear if this married couple, a Portuguese woman and a Spanish man, had omicron, but at least one had tested positive for COVID-19 and were placed in a quarantine hotel after arriving from southern Africa.
Sunday evening, the couple “made a run for it” (according to Dutch media reports) and left their quarantine hotel without checking out. A security guard noticed and alerted the Marechaussee (national police force).
The police found the couple onboard their flight to Spain and arrested them moments before the flight was set to depart. According to a police spokesperson, the couple were arrested “almost silently and without violence.”
They have now been placed in insolation at an area hospital. Charges may be filed against them for evading quarantine rules.
If true, what a selfish move by the couple. Certainly, I can empathize with their desire to get home, especially if ill. But if at least one of them was positive, their desire to get home does not justify putting other in direct risk from any variant of COVID-19 (especially when the Dutch government footed their hotel bill…it’s not like they had no way to pay for their stay or food).
CONCLUSION
A couple returning from South Africa tried to escape their quarantine hotel in order to fly home to Spain. They were busted and now are prisoners in an isolation ward of an Amsterdam-area hospital. While not resorting to Hong Kong-like tactics, the Dutch appear to be taking quarantines quite seriously.
image: KLM
Really selfish, or as some call it nowadays in the US, patriotic.
They would fit right in perfectly in today’s US republican party. They have probably already been sent an affiliation form.
Covid which 99.5% don’t even know they have or have mild symptoms. The govts are denying other treatments to lock people up? Insane.
Ps, Quercetin prevents Covid but where is the govt all you righteous? No where. This all is an outrageous farce to make money. This is not about health.
These criminals should be prosecuted to the maximum extent possible, and they need to do serious jail time.
Mathew, thank you for covering this (most of the card-pushing blogs have been silent). I urge you to continue to cover stories like this, and I’d like to specifically ask you highlight other selfish cheats who are presenting fraudulent documentation (vaccine cards and negative COVID test results) in order to get around basic public health requirements so they can travel.
I suspect bogus documentation is ramapant — why? Well, at least 21% of those on the recent flights from South Africa to Amsterdam that triggered the Omicron scare tested positive in Amsterdam — how many of them had presented “negative” test results before boarding that fight? Either the tests everyone is using are so inaccurate as to be useless, or else the paper results shown were fake. If this practice turns out to be widespread (I suspect it is very common) then a clampdown on ALL international travel will quickly follow. Cheating on COVID documentation represents a huge risk to continued travel and to worldwide economic recovery — the stakes for us all are enormous.
Please highlight these cheats, and the inevitable consequences for the rest of us who are willing to follow the rules (hint: I bet in the coming weeks, it’s going to get a LOT more difficult for you and me and other honest folks to travel…we all have a lot of skin in this game).
BTW, agree completely with SSoOC above. That kind of greedy selfishness and complete disregard for others is at the root of all our problems today.
This story is more complex than originally reported. The couple has been speaking with media in Europe and has a different story to tell. According to them and their lawyer, they’ve tested negative three times (PCR) and two times (Rapid self test) since the original positive test. It seems that the positive test of the woman that happened at Schiphol was a false positive. She also claims to have recovered from corona nearly 3 months ago. The boyfriend never tested positive, he just wanted to stay with his girlfriend.
Then there’s the matter of the “escape”. There is no law by which the two should have been held. The guards at the hotel actually told them “I would leave if I were you, we can’t legally keep you”. By all accounts in Dutch media, there isn’t really a legal basis for forcing them into a quarantine hotel and even when pulled off the plane they were originally under arrest and this was quickly stopped when the Spanish ambassador got involved. The mayor of the local municipality used an obscure procedure to force them into quarantine again, but the legality is questionable.
The point here is that there’s a lot more to this story that meets the eye. The story is widely covered in the Dutch press and at this point I’m starting to side with the couple. The entire process of holding these pax on the plane for hours, only to release them into a crowded holding pen for several hours and then a slow and inefficient testing process was a complete sh!tshow. The Dutch government screwed up at every step and was an uncoordinated mess. I can’t blame these two for wanting to go home and restore some sanity to the situation, especially given the way they were treated and that they tested negative multiple times after the fact.
Well according to the comments above yours, they are republican criminals that should be punished to the maximum extent and be thrown into Guantanamo. I don’t think we need to look at the entire story according to the other guys.
Oohwee Jan. Throw them in Guantanamo?. Glad you are not my probation officer. For many ignorance is bliss as far as Covid goes including Mr Klint.
Thank you, Ryan, for the context. and Jan is correct. judging by the two Schutzstaffel Protection Squad Nazi posts above, these two criminals should be send to Auschwitz immediately.
Yes and beaten til they vote for foggy Joe Biden.
I love how the Covid story quickly becomes a political issue which it is.
Well, it was a Ramada they were staying at. Just saying.
It could have been worse, like a Scottish Inn.
https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/nieuws/nederland/artikel/5270829/gedwongen-isolatie-spaans-stel-quarantaine-coronavirus-test-zuid
In Dutch (use chrome to translate), but this is the other side of the story. They were released today and free to fly back to Spain. Glad to see that Dutch authorities finally relented rather than trying to continue saving face for their incompetence.
Interesting developments. I will do a follow-up. I had even read a Dutch story in Parool which did not mention the couple’s side.
Seems this was a case of coronafear gone too far.
The world continues to act irrationally to thus virus
Remember the rules and laws i The Netherlands change daily because there is no functioning government- just a caretaker government.
My cousin in the Netherlands said his company requires testing of all a Employees but many younger ones have chosen not to be vaccinated and that’s ok because they hide behind “privacy laws” . So there are no real “laws” when it comes to quarantine either.
There should be some kind of worldwide policy on testing and vaccinations for cross border travel.
People ignoring rules and science because they feel too important for those rules to apply to them? Sounds like the USA. Fortunately the Dutch have enough sense to take this seriously.