A US woman on a tourist trip to Costa Rica has tested positive for the coronavirus, the first confirmed case in Central America, the country's health minister said Friday.

Costa Rica on Tuesday warned it should not be seen as an "open bridge" to America after striking a deal to start shipping out stranded Cuban migrants to other Central American countries.

"We do not have the resources" to take in any more Cuban migrants, Costa Rican Foreign Minister Manuel Gonzalez told reporters.

A meeting Tuesday in Mexico City of representatives from the United States, Central America and Mexico failed to make a breakthrough on the situation of thousands of Cuban migrants stranded in Costa Rica, the foreign minister of that country said.

"Unfortunately the Guatemalan position was unchanged" from last Friday, when a meeting of Central American nations refused Costa Rica's call to allow the U.S.-bound Cubans passage north, Foreign Minister Manuel Gonzalez told reporters.

Costa Rica on Friday partially pulled out of SICA, a regional body promoting Central American cooperation, after neighboring nations refused to help handle a growing Cuban migrant crisis.

President Luis Guillermo Solis announced the decision at a news conference on his return from a SICA summit in El Salvador that failed to reach agreement on the fate of thousands of U.S.-bound Cubans stuck in Costa Rica since mid-November.

A Costa Rican lawyer caught handing a pack of cocaine to an imprisoned client during a penitentiary visit has himself been sentenced to 10 years behind bars, prosecutors said Friday.

The convicted attorney, Willy Ruiz Gonzalez, was ordered into preventive detention for six months pending his possible appeal.

Costa Rica's president landed in Havana Sunday amid mounting regional tension over the fate of thousands of Cuban migrants stranded in Costa Rica en route to the United States.

President Luis Guillermo Solis confirmed the issue would be part of his talks with Cuban counterpart Raul Castro but offered few other details on the two-day trip.

A protest by desperate Cuban migrants stranded on their journey to the United States paralyzed a key border crossing between Costa Rica and Nicaragua Tuesday.

Long lines of buses and trucks formed on both sides of the Central American border as the migrants refused to let traffic pass, authorities from the two countries said.

A surge of some 2,000 Cuban migrants trying to cross Central America to reach the United States triggered a diplomatic spat between Costa Rica and Nicaragua Monday, plunging tense relations between the two countries to a new low.

The row boiled over this past weekend when Nicaragua forcibly sent back the Cubans, who had been given temporary visas by Costa Rica to traverse its territory, ignoring an appeal by San Jose that they be given a "humanitarian corridor" through the region.

Nicaragua sent thousands of Cubans back to Costa Rica Sunday after the U.S.-bound migrants stormed across their shared border, accusing San Jose of "deliberately and irresponsibly" sparking a humanitarian crisis.

The diplomatic spat erupted after Costa Rica said Saturday it was giving temporary visas to a group of about 1,000 stranded, penniless Cubans, telling them they had one week to cross the country and continue their journey toward the United States.

Costa Rican authorities on Tuesday broke up a ring connected to an international network that smuggled migrants from Cuba, Asia and Africa willing to pay up to $30,000 each for a chance to make their way to the United States, officials said.

Twelve people were arrested in raids and near the Costa Rican capital San Jose and in the northwestern province of Guanacaste carried out in cooperation with Colombia and the U.S. embassy, the government's Public Ministry said in a statement.