Corona infection in Hadsel spread to Andøy – VG

Ten people have been confirmed to be infected in Hadsel municipality in Vesterålen. The infection has prompted the municipality to introduce strong measures, including the entire Melbu school with employees and 300 students in quarantine.

It was TV2 that first reported the widespread outbreak.

Now it turns out that the outbreak has moved to the neighboring municipality of Andøy. One of those infected in Hadsel has transmitted the infection to two others in Andøy.

One of them is employed at the Air Force airport in Andøya. From here, the five Orion aircraft are operated for defense.

11 employees at the airport have been quarantined. A total of 70 people are in quarantine in the municipality.

Infection checked at the airport today

Air Force communications chief Stine Barclay Gaasland confirms the infection to VG.

– We have heard that an airport employee is infected. Yesterday she felt bad and an infection was detected, she says.

She says it is too early to say what the consequences will be for the rest of the airport.

– We have to wait for the test results before we can say anything more about it. We have placed several in temporary quarantine until we have received a clarification of the situation and have close communication with the municipal doctors and the infection monitoring team. We just have to wait for the results of the response. But we have good infection control routines and we take the precautions we need, Gaasland says.

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– Out of control

Hadsel’s municipal chief doctor, Ingebjørn Bleidvin, tells VG that they have no control over the outbreak.

– We hope there will be more positives, and we cannot rule out that there are positive cases, also among people who are not in quarantine. Therefore, we must say that we are not in full control, he says.

This is the reason why the municipality has introduced comprehensive measures. In all, nearly 400 are in quarantine at Hadsel. In Andøy, about 50 school students are in quarantine, after one of those infected is a school student.

– The experience of similar outbreaks in the country is that early crackdown provides greater hope of bringing things down relatively quickly. So we’ve quarantined a number of people who, by definition, are not safe close contacts, but who are potential close contacts, Bleidvin says.

This is the first outbreak of infection at Hadsel in Vesterålen since August, when Hurtigruten passengers disembarked infected.

– We hope that the extraordinary measures will shorten the outbreak. If you lose control of a single infected person, the outbreak is likely to continue, Bleidvin says.