A maintenance worker at Disneyland Paris in France has tested positive for the new coronavirus that has sickened over 111,000 and killed at least 3,800 people globally, according to a new report from Reuters and France’s Le Parisien.
The Disney worker has not had any direct contact with visitors to Disneyland Paris, based on the reports, but park operators are trying to figure out what kind of contact the unnamed worker may have had with other employees. Disney Parks did not respond to a request for comment Monday afternoon, but there were no plans to close the park, according to Reuters.
France currently has at least 1,209 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, the fourth highest in the world outside of China, behind South Korea, Italy, and Japan which all have over 7,000 cases. France also has 19 deaths.
Disney’s newest theme park in Shanghai, China, which opened in the summer of 2016, was the first to close indefinitely over coronavirus fears on January 25. That was followed by the shuttering of Hong Kong Disney just a day later and the closure of Disney’s theme parks in Japan on February 29.
The U.S. Disney parks, Disney World in Florida and Disneyland in California, remain open. Both states have high numbers of cases compared with the rest of the country. Florida currently has 18 cases of COVID-19 and yet has conducted just 267 tests, according to a press release emailed to Gizmodo on Monday.
California currently has 114 cases, 24 of which were people flown out of Wuhan, China and from the Diamond Princess cruise in Japan, according to the latest figures available from the California Department of Public Health. At least one person has died in California, though the vast majority of the country’s deaths have been in the state of Washington. Sixteen of the state’s deaths have all been tied to one nursing home outside of Seattle.
Will the rest of Disney’s parks around the world be forced to close due to COVID-19? No one knows for sure. But given the rapid spread of this virus, it seems like a matter of when, not if.