CORONA MYSTERY: HOW DID ARGENTINE SAILORS WHO SPENT 35 DAYS AT SEA, TEST POSITIVE FOR COVID19? REPORT

Doctors and medical experts in Argentina are trying to solve a case that could be termed as a medical mystery. 57 sailors who returned after spending 35 days at sea, tested positive for coronavirus. However, the entire crew tested negative before leaving the port. 

According to the health ministry for the southern Tierra del Fuego province, the Echizen Maru fishing trawler returned back to port after few of the crew members showed symptoms of COVID19.

Out of the 61 crew members, 57 sailors have tested positive for the virus. The sailors were hospitalized. However, all the crew members had undergone a mandatory quarantine for a period of 14 days at a hotel in the city of Ushuaia. They tested negative prior to that as well. 

The province’s emergency operations committee told the media that while two of the other sailors have tested negative, the others are waiting for the results.

"It's hard to establish how this crew was infected, considering that for 35 days, they had no contact with dry land and that supplies were only brought in from the port of Ushuaia," said Alejandra Alfaro, the director of primary health care in Tierra del Fuego.

A team was examining "the chronology of symptoms in the crew to establish the chronology of contagion," she added.

This is a "case that escapes all description in publications, because an incubation period this long has not been described anywhere. We cannot explain how the symptoms appeared,” the head of the infectious diseases department at Ushuaia Regional Hospital, Leandro Ballatore told the media.

Argentina’s total number of positive cases exceeded 100,000 and the death toll stands at 1,859.