A nine-year-old British child diagnosed with coronavirus is in hospital in France, reports The Guardian.
The child is one of five Britons who tested positive for the virus – another six UK nationals are being kept under observation in French hospitals.
The group had been staying in two apartments in a ski chalet in the Haute-Savoie region in the eastern French Alps when they were visited by a Briton who had been in Singapore and was found to have the virus when he returned to the UK at the end of last month.
The French health minister Agnès Buzyn said none of the patients were in a serious condition. She described the new outbreak as a “cluster, grouping around one original case”.
Jean-Yves Grall, the head of the regional health authority, told journalists the child lived in the ski resort with their parents and two siblings. The child’s mother was in the UK taking exams and the children were with their father. The six other Britons were in a second apartment in the same chalet. He did not give details of where the visitor believed to have brought the virus from Singapore had stayed.
The local health authority is disinfecting the building and is searching for anyone who might have come into contact with the group.
Grall said the infected child had attended school in Contamines-Montjoie and had recently spent a day at a second school in the nearby town of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains.
He said the schools would be shut next week as the authorities tried to determine with whom the child had come into contact.
Etienne Jacquet, the mayor of Contamines-Montjoie, said: “I was called by the regional health agency at 12.30am [on Saturday] about two British families. Seven were in one chalet and four in another. Of the 11 people, five have tested positive for the coronavirus.”
Édouard Philippe, the French prime minister, called a meeting of health ministers on Saturday and the ministry has opened a UK hotline (0800 100 379) in an attempt to find out who else may have been in contact with the Britons.