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Gambian authorities were on Friday searching for 14 people who broke out of a hotel where they had been quarantined as a coronavirus precaution and escaped, health officials said.

The group was among 32 passengers who arrived on a flight from the United Kingdom on Wednesday and placed in quarantine in the hotel located in the capital Banjul.

In a statement broadcast on Thursday, Health Minister Ahmadou Lamin Samateh said that some quarantined passengers “apparently became aggressive,” broke down the hotel gates and ran away.

He added that the incident was “very, very detrimental” and created “risk for the entire nation”.

The tiny West African state recorded its first coronavirus case on Tuesday, in a young woman who also flew into the country from the United Kingdom.

President Adama Barrow had the same day announced measures to contain the virus, such as closing schools and placing arrivals from affected country in quarantine. 

In India, authorities have placed more than 80 cities and districts across the country under stringent lockdown after cases of coronavirus were detected there, as the world’s second-most populous nation stepped up measures to halt the spread of the pandemic.

“State governments will issue orders allowing only essential services to operate in about 75 districts with confirmed Covid-19 cases or casualties,” said a home ministry official in New Delhi on Sunday.

The state shutdowns came during a 14-hour voluntary curfew that Prime Minister Narendra Modi said would test India’s ability to fight the pandemic. – AFP.