More details have emerged about the couple who tested positive for coronavirus after flying to the Netherlands from South Africa and who were picked up by border police trying to leave the country by plane.

The mayor of Haarlemmermeer, which includes Schiphol airport, told breakfast television show Goedemorgen Nederland that the couple were in the hotel voluntarily and could not be made to stay there.

Having tested positive for coronavirus on Friday, the Spanish and Portuguese couple were required to go into quarantine but not necessarily in the hotel where they were taken.

Given they had no address in the Netherlands, they went to the hotel, where many of the passengers who tested positive are staying.

‘Security guards advised the couple not to leave but there was no legal grounds to hold them,’ mayor Marianne Schuurmans told the programme. ‘That was something I had to take care of, as mayor and as local safety board chief.’

The couple have now been placed in mandatory isolation at a Dutch hospital, the spokesman said. It is not clear if this is because they are sick or because of the risk they will try to leave again.

The public prosecution department is now looking into what should happen next. The couple can be fined or even jailed for failing to go into quarantine.

In total, 61 out of 624 people on the two flights from South Africa to arrive on Friday were found to have coronavirus, and so far 13 of them have been identified as having the new variant Omicron.