Authorities in southwestern Spain have issued an international health alert to locate a group of Dutch tourists who left a hotel where they were meant to isolate for 10 days after testing positive for coronavirus, reports AP.

Charo Espino, a spokesperson for the health department in the Extremadura region, said that seven of nine of the tourists from the Netherlands who had tested positive for Covid-19 had simply disappeared.

The central government's representative in the region, Yolanda Garca Seco, told local media that police were searching for the tourists and that airports were also on full alert in case they try to leave the country.

The group was traveling through Extremadura on Tuesday when some of them felt sick and stopped in Navas del Modroo, a town halfway between the regional capital, Cceres, and the border with Portugal, for a test that confirmed their contagion, local councillor Denis Talavera told Extremadura TV.