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Coronavirus in Argentina: how was the chain of infections that ended with several infected after a clandestine baby shower

2020-05-31T01:30:22.849Z


The first infected was a woman who works in a nursing home and who also sells chinstraps and gel alcohol. He had been with a person who arrived from Buenos Aires. There are already 18 positive cases. The mayor ordered to return to phase 1 of the quarantine.


Guillermo Villarreal

05/29/2020 - 21:00

  • Clarín.com
  • Society

On Saturday he began to feel some discomfort and even with mild symptoms, as he continues in these hours, the coronavirus test gave him positive . Since then the effect on his family was that of the pieces of a domino: his mother, 70, and his three children, 22, 24 and 25, were infected. In between, some went to a baby shower to which at least 30 people were invited and that meeting, they fear here, may become a focus of infection in a community that had no cases. There are already 18 tests that tested positive.

The woman is 49 years old, she is a domestic staff on Sundays in a nursing home, she sells alcohol gel and chinstrap at her home and "is the index case" for Necochea infectologists. She did not go to the baby shower, but was in charge of making the souvenirs. So where did you catch it?

This is what the specialists consulted by Clarín in this town in the southeast of Buenos Aires are trying to determine . They understand, based on the network of links that they could be weaving, that they may have contracted the virus from a family friend who had arrived from Buenos Aires , where he had undergone medical treatment in a sanitarium. The result of the swab to which that man underwent is not yet known.  

"Make it positive, he would be revealing to us that it was case zero, and that this woman's family became infected at home, in that contact. With her live the mother and two of her three children. They, later, could have brought the virus at that meeting, "said a health source.

The worst hypothesis, of which nobody for the moment dares to speak here, is that this potential case is zero and then it is necessary to analyze whether there is no community transmission in the locality. 

In Necochea, the last patient with Covid-19 had been discharged on April 23 . Just last Saturday, when it was a month without positive cases, in a small house in the 9 de Julio neighborhood, on the outskirts of the spa, there was a meeting attended by at least 30 people. A clandestine baby shower.

The exact number of attendees is unknown because not all of those who were there that afternoon, entertaining a pregnant woman, were located: only half of them volunteered. All were swabbed and the results are awaited from the National Institute of Epidemiology (INE), in Mar del Plata. 

So yesterday afternoon, the municipality's health secretary, Ruth Kalle, asked residents to be "faithful" in the information they supply to the public system. 

In this network, in the search for cases, the inmates of the nursing home where "the index case" works were swabbed; who confessed to having been at the baby shower and some of their contacts. After the first case, 20 swabs were sent to the INE, of which the result of 11 had been known early. Of these 11, 6 were positive and 5 negative.

Among these is the sixth case of Necochea's positive covid is a 48-year-old woman, health personnel in a center for the disabled where, also, a woman close to the family of the "index case" works . Anyway, specialists believe here that the woman would have been infected in Bariloche, from where she recently arrived, and where she had contact with foreigners. All those infected, Kalle said, are at home with mild symptoms.

Another 40 swabs sent the municipality to the Mar del Plata epidemiological institute yesterday, that is to say that in total they expected the result of 59 tests. On the night of this Friday it was learned that there were 12 other tests that were positive and that there are already 18 in the city. Kalle said that in these hours in the district there are 80 people who remain isolated.  

"We knew this could happen and we said so in the emergency committee a week ago," said Mayor Arturo Rojas, who, based on these new positive tests, decided that starting this Saturday, the city will return to phase 1 of quarantine. .

Rojas watched the necochenses were relaxing . More than a month had passed without cases, many commercial activities had been authorized (always under strict sanitary controls), and some recreational ones, such as nautical ones. The weekend surfing had returned to the "gently sloping" beaches, as they are called here.

But now they will have to adjust the chinstrap. When the new results of the night tests were not yet known, Rojas had said that he would not back down on the flexibility of the quarantine. He said he would take  steps to adjust the controls likeclose the two entrances on routes 88 and 86, at night, at a time to be established; and that no one who is not duly authorized could enter the town. However, shortly before midnight on Friday and before the multiplication of positive cases, he decided to return to page 0 : from this Saturday only essential activities will be enabled.

Necochea. Special delivery

PS

Source: clarin

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