Marruecos aísla una ciudad entera y cierra 18 fábricas por brote de coronavirus

The Moroccan authorities today isolated the southern city of Safi, with more than 300,000 inhabitants, and closed its 18 fish factories when a new outbreak of coronavirus appeared, which could become one of the most serious in the country.

A government source told Efe that access to and exit from the Atlantic city is prohibited except in cases of extreme need.​​​​​​

The third urban district, where the largest number of those infected is found, has in turn been isolated from the rest of the city.

The measures also include the closure of the city's beaches, the suspension of workers' transport, the advancement of the closing hours of shops and cafés and the closure of the two local markets "Assalam" and "Al Siha".

According to the latest figures published by the Ministry of Health's delegation in Safi, located 334 km south of Rabat, 452 new positive cases were recorded in the city yesterday, which represented 80% of the infections recorded that day throughout Morocco.

In addition, 673 people are waiting for PCR tests, which could significantly increase the number of infected people.

Although the authorities have not provided details of the Safi outbreak, several local media agree that the main outbreak is concentrated in several fish canneries.

This is the fourth outbreak of coronavirus in industrial units in Morocco and Western Sahara, after those in Kenitra province, north of Rabat - in two strawberry processing units - in Larache, El-Aaiun and Safi, the latter three in fish canning factories.

So far, Morocco has recorded 14,132 cases of coronavirus confirmed by laboratories, of which 234 patients have died and 9,410 have been cured.