He walked in dressed as Santa Claus and spread the virus to a retirement home in Belgium

At least 18 people have died after a man dressed as Santa Claus visited a geriatric hospital in Belgium. According to local press, the character went to the scene without knowing that he was infected with the coronavirus.

The asylum would have approximately 120 residents and 36 employees infected with Covid-19, who became infected after Santa’s visit in early December. The dramatic story unfolded in Mol, a small town of Belgium 35,000 inhabitants.

The son of one of the 169 residents of the Hemelrijck house decided to dress up as Santa Claus and visit the grandparents at Christmas. A few days after this party, the man started to feel bad and they took a positive sample. Since, cases in residence multiplied.

In the first tests appeared 45 positive cases, after several elderly people started showing symptoms related to Covid-19. However, later tests showed the problem to be even more serious: at least 120 infected elderly, 16 infected employees and 18 deceased residents. All cases would be linked to the visit of Santa Claus.

Belgium is going through the second wave of infections and announced that he would start with the vaccination campaign against the coronavirus on January 5. At present, it is the country in Europe with the highest rate of positives per capita.

These types of meetings are prohibited and the company that manages the retirement home he allegedly broke the rules by allowing the entry of a resident’s son and his contact with the grandparents. Moreover, he would have done so without informing the competent authorities.

Jannes Verheyen, spokesperson for Armonea, which is the company that runs the retirement home, said that “it makes no sense to condemn people. The team is very shocked by what has happened, but it also motivates them a lot to bring out the virus again. ”

Race for vaccine: more countries join massive campaign

The mayor of the town of Mol clarified that they would not have allowed the act if they had received the request. “If they had asked for permission, we would have given a negative answer”, argued Wim Caeyers.

With 638,000 cases of coronavirus, Belgium already has 19,158 deaths since the start of the pandemic. In the past few hours, the country has also confirmed that has positive cases of the new strain of Covid-19.

CI / Fel