Coronavirus has directly affected the Barcelona city council, forcing the closure of a municipal nursery school along with the isolation of the Catalan capital's deputy mayor and two other city councillors. The city council led by mayor Ada Colau has said in a statement this Monday that, following the detection of two positive cases of Covid-19 among municipal government staff this weekend, protection protocols have been activated. Among those in precautionary isolation are three members of the council: deputy mayor Jaume Collboni and councillors Jordi Martí and Montserrat Ballarín.
City council employees, infected
On Monday, two new cases of the virus were detected in the city of Barcelona: the first, a worker at the municipally-run nursery school EBM Gràcia, located in the central neighbourhood of Gràcia, and the protocol applied to such cases has prompted the immediate closure of the school, initially until March 19th.
The second case was an employee of the city council's economics, resources and economic promotion department. The application of the protocol has meant the precautionary isolation of a number of people from the Barcelona city council's management team. None of these people show any symptoms of the disease and will continue to work at home. City councillors Jaume Collboni, Jordi Martí and Montserrat Ballarín, are also self-isolating at home waiting for the city's Public Health Agency to evaluate if they can go to work.
Municipal staff are working in coordination with the health authorities to finish tracing all of the contacts of these two people who have tested positive for COVID-19, and to ask them to stay home for the coming days. This task is at present still underway on a case-by-case basis.
Mild symptoms
The two people who tested positive have mild symptoms, are progressing well and are at home. No other person has shown symptoms and they are working normally from home. The city council intends to provide teleworking capabilities so that the municipal operation remains fully active.
The city council led by mayor Colau has sent a message of calm to the organization and to Barcelona citizens in general, reminding everyone that all of the measures being taken are in accordance with the criteria established by the competent health authorities.
As of this Monday 9th March, 101 people had been confirmed as infected with Covid-19 in Catalonia, most of them in the Barcelona metropolitan area. Three people in Catalonia infected with the virus have died. The total number of cases in the Spanish state stood at 904 on Monday morning, with the Madrid region (469 cases) and the Basque Country (149) most seriously affected. A total of 25 deaths from the coronavirus in Spain had been confirmed by Monday morning.