A man was arrested in the city of Manacor on the Spanish island of Mallorca on suspicion of having infected 22 people with covid-19, according to the Spanish National Police.
“Despite having symptoms and having had a PCR test, he continued with his normal life without waiting for the result or quarantining himself,” police said about the suspect in a tweet published on Saturday.
Authorities said the 40-year-old “came to work with a fever of 40 ° C according to his colleagues. He was coughing loudly all over the place, lowering his mask, while saying ‘I’m going to give everyone the coronavirus.’
The man infected eight people directly and 14 indirectly, both at his workplace and at the gym he attended, according to police. Three of them were babies as young as one year old, according to a police statement.
Authorization to resume use of Johnson & Johnson vaccine 0:44The investigation began “at the end of January when the authorities learned of the existence of a covid-19 outbreak in a well-known establishment in Manacor,” the statement read.
To date, almost 3.5 million cases of covid-19 have been registered in Spain, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, and more than 77,500 people have died.