Healthcare workers transport a patient on a stretcher into an ambulance at Life Care Center of Kirkland on Saturday in Kirkland, Washington. Dozens of staff and residents at Life Care Center of Kirkland are reportedly exhibiting coronavirus-like symptoms with two confirmed cases of COVID-19 so far. Photo: AFP

Chilean writer Luis Sepulveda, who lives in northern Spain, has contracted the new coronavirus, according to the health authorities in Portugal where the best-selling author recently visited.

The 70-year-old author started showing symptoms of the virus on February 25 after he had returned to his home in Spain's Asturias region from a literary festival in neighboring Portugal.

The regional Asturias government announced on Saturday that it had detected the first coronavirus case in the region, without identifying the author.

"The patient is stable. His wife, a 66-year-old woman is also displaying the symptoms and is being tested," and both have been admitted to hospital, it added. 

The Portuguese authorities called on all those who had been in contact with Sepulveda during last month's Correntes d'Escritas literary festival in Porto to make themselves known.

So far Portugal hasn't registered a single confirmed case of the COVID-19 outbreak while Spain has had 73 confirmed cases.

Sepulveda was exiled from Chile in 1975 because of his political activities.

His works, which are known for their simple humor and depictions of life in South America, include The Old Man Who Read Love Stories and The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly.