A couple who slipped out of their hotel after returning from South Africa were arrested by police in The Netherlands.
The couple, who have been identified as a Spanish man and a Portuguese woman, boarded a flight to Spain at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport on Sunday night but were stopped by Dutch national police.
The plane was about to take off when the arrests took place. The national police wrote on their website that both people had been transferred to the GGD. The GGD is a public health body.
The pair fled from their hotel at 6 pm on Sunday.
Het Parool said that they were among 61 people being held in the hotel after testing positive for carbon dioxide.
The Omicron variant has been identified in 13 of the cases.
It is not known which variant the couple tested positive for, or if they were on the same flight back to Amsterdam as the 13 people who tested positive for the Omicron variant.
The couple were able to leave their hotel with no problem, as they were not legally required to.
The mayor of Haarlemmermeer said that people stay in the hotel voluntarily.
There was no legal title to hold the couple, so security guards advised them not to leave.
People would flee, we did not expect that.
The pair could still be prosecuted for violating the rules.
The Omicron variant was identified in several southern African nations last week. Omicron cases have been reported by the UK, Canada, Israel, Belgium, the Netherlands, Australia, and Germany.
Scientists are trying to learn more about the new variant.
The World Health Organization said on Sunday that it is not yet clear whether Omicron is more transmissible than other COVID variants.
The Omicron variant is going to go all over, even though a number of countries have already enforced travel restrictions.
