A nursing home in southern Brussels has been put on lockdown after tests revealed that at least 34 people there tested positive for the new coronavirus.
A total of 11 residents of the La Cambre nursing home in Watermael-Boitsfort were urgently evacuated and hospitalised on Wednesday evening, following confirmation that they were infected with the virus, La Libre reports.
"The patients who present symptoms are isolated in their room and movement inside the nursing home is strongly restricted," Brussels Health Minister Alain Maron said.
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The news follows a decision by Flanders on Wednesday to ban all visits to nursing homes, mimicking a previous move by Brussels and Wallonia in order to protect elderly populations from the outbreak, declared a pandemic on Wednesday evening.
Maron said that authorities were in "permanent contact" with the rest home, which he said had the support of Brussels' Saint-Pierre hospital, one of the two country's main treatment centres for the outbreak.
"The number of cases and their state of health is followed every hour," Maron said, adding that all measures were being put in place in order to keep the virus from spreading further.
The news comes as federal health officials said the number of confirmed cases of the new Covid-19 coronavirus had reached 399 as of Thursday, after 85 out of 806 samples tested positive for the virus.
Gabriela Galindo
The Brussels Times
