NICOSIA – Fears over the coronavirus have led Cypriot authorities to quarantine more women who traveled to Italy, where it has spread and become deadly, in a bid to make sure it doesn’t happen on the island.

The quarantine is a precautionary measure, health officials said, to check potentially high-risk cases, especially from areas in tourist-popular northern Italy, which includes sites such as Venice, with visitors emptying out and returning home fast.

The women being held on Cyprus had been in contact with confirmed cases, said Kathimerini Cyprus in a report, after Health Minister Constantinos Ioannou tweeted that three people who traveled to Italy were quarantined. The three women, who tested negative for the coronavirus, would remain isolated for 14 day, following strict protocols, the minister added.

Reports said a woman in Paphos, who attended a conference in Italy, notified authorities after finding she had been close to at least one confirmed case. She was then admitted into Limassol General Hospital in a special isolated room.

Besides high risk cases, a group of Erasmus students also returned to the island abruptly, after their host university was shut down. The group’s chaperone told reporters saying the teens did not want to come back because there was more panic in Cyprus than Milan.

None of the high school students exhibited any symptoms but their parents had been advised to take precautions, including self-quarantine for 14 days, the paper reported.

Earlier, health officials quarantined another woman as a coronavirus high-risk case, after a private jet landed in Larnaca with reports saying a crew member had come into contact with Israel’s first ever confirmed case.

Another young woman from Iran, who exhibited symptoms such as fever and coughing on the Turkish-occupied northern part of the island tested negative for the CoVid-19 according to Turkish-Cypriot officials.

On the Greek-Cypriot side, health officials were reportedly considering more restrictive measures at other checkpoints, especially to deal with non-English-speaking foreign visitors who are being allowed to visit the island.