A critically sick German coronavirus patient may have spread the illness to countless others, it is feared, with hundreds of people quarantined in their homes today.
Health officials are desperately retracing the 47-year-old man's steps after he joined in carnival parties and went to a hospital check-up in Cologne in the days before he was isolated.
The patient's wife, who works at a kindergarten, is also infected and the pair had been to the Netherlands in the fortnight before they were diagnosed.
Three people connected to the couple have already tested positive in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia where they live.
In addition, a German air force soldier who had been in contact with the man has also tested positive at a military hospital.
Carnival revellers and local residents are now facing a two-week quarantine with schools and kindergartens shut, while Dutch officials fear the couple could spark the country's first outbreak.
The 47-year-old man is now critically ill and being treated in intensive care at a hospital in Düsseldorf, the North Rhine-Westphalia state government said.
The man had initially been taken to a different hospital in the town of Erkelenz with symptoms of pneumonia.
His wife, a kindergarten teacher aged 46, has pneumonia and fever but her case is not as serious as her husband's, doctor Dieter Haeussinger said yesterday.
Both are now in isolation, but German health authorities are now scrambling to quarantine hundreds of people who might have come into contact with them.
'It's a rather Sisyphean task,' district administrator Stephan Pusch said, referring to the Greek legend of a man condemned to push a boulder up a hill for all eternity.
'We're assuming that they were out with the symptoms for ten days.'
Hundreds of people in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia are facing a two-week quarantine in their homes because they live near the couple's home of Gangelt near the Dutch border, German media said.
Kindergartens and schools in the area are shut until Monday, amid fears the couple's children could have passed on the virus, and citizens have been asked to refrain from large gatherings.
Authorities also have closed two doctors' offices that the man had visited.
The 47-year-old had also visited a hospital in Cologne for an unrelated health check, sparking alarm in the city.
The head of Cologne's health department, Johannes Niessen, said the man had come into contact with 41 people.
They include several doctors and nurses, at least one of whom was showing symptoms of illness.
State health minister Karl-Josef Laumann said the patients' contacts at two hospitals in Cologne and Erkelenz had been identified and would stop working.
The couple attended carnival celebrations in the village of Langbroich and also went on a short trip to the Netherlands in the 10 days before they were taken ill, authorities said.
The Netherlands has yet to confirm a case of the virus, but Dutch authorities are now tracing his movements in the belief that he may have spread the bug across the border.
As if that were not enough, a soldier in the German air force who had contact with the infected man also has tested positive for the virus.
Colonel Rainer Volb, acting head of the German military hospital in Koblenz, said the man was in good health apart from a sore throat.
It is not known how the couple contracted the virus, which originally broke out in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.
Germany has been bracing for an increase in confirmed cases since the number of infected people spiked Friday in nearby Italy.
The three cases including the air force soldier bring the German total to 21.
Officials have urged people with possible symptoms of illness to stay at home and contact their doctors by phone.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
