Barber defends Turkish hair transplant trip after Covid cluster in Spanish town

Health authorities in south-west Spain are investigating a cluster of Covid infections that erupted after a barber and 17 of his customers in a small town in Extremadura tested positive following a group trip to Turkey for hair transplants.

Manuel Parada, a 36-year-old barber from Calamonte, organised the three-day treatment visit earlier this month.

By last Thursday, 29 people in the town had tested positive for Covid – including Parada and 14 of the travellers – and 250 close contacts had been identified.

The town’s primary school, which has more than 500 pupils, has been closed after a handful of cases were detected among students’ families.

Authorities have yet to establish the source of the infections, but are looking into whether they can be traced to the coach driver who drove the men back from Madrid’s airport.

The travellers were tested for the virus after it emerged that the driver had tested positive last Wednesday. Unaware that they had Covid, the men had spent a week going about their lives as usual.

“This situation is not very positive for the town,” said Calamonte’s mayor, Magdalena Carmona. “But we have to deal with it as best we can and carrying on working together.”

Parada said he and the other travellers had followed all the health guidelines, adding he thought it unlikely the virus had been picked up in Turkey because the health checks there were so strict.

“We didn’t go to Turkey on holiday – it was a medical trip, which is allowed by the foreign office,” he told the online newspaper El Español. “If it hadn’t been allowed, we would have chosen a different date.”

The barber said he and his customers were “fed up and angry” over some of the comments made on social media, and said illegal parties were also responsible for spreading the virus.

“I don’t have Facebook but my colleagues tell me they’re pinning the blame on us and turning us into memes. It’s really easy to criticise when you don’t know. There are other outbreaks, but they’ve got nothing to do with us.”

Parada said he hoped life in Calamonte would get to normal soon and that “the stress doesn’t make our hair fall out”.