Emilia vexler
03/16/2021 16:00
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 03/16/2021 4:00 PM
On Tuesday he started with a new school on the list of Argentine graduates who returned from Cancun infected with coronavirus: Saint Matthews, in Belgrano.
The positive was confirmed in the tests carried out at the Ezeiza airport, but the PCR carried out in that tourist destination had given them negative.
From Mexico they assure that the tests would have been done in
a "trucho" laboratory
.
The alarm went off on Saturday, when it was confirmed that 44 students returning from their graduate trip tested positive.
Before this controversy, the key is to understand why these graduate trips occurred, amid the official announcement of the limitation to prevent new strains of the coronavirus from entering the country.
The Government confirmed to
Clarín
that these groups
traveled outside the rule
.
"The trips themselves did not need authorization,
any Argentine can leave
. For graduate trips, the agencies have to have a special authorization that the ministry does. And the tickets that it sold to Cancun (the agency) did so out of the rule. ", detailed to this newspaper
Matías Lammens, the Minister of Tourism and Sports.
Lammens always talks about the
Moon Travel
company
, which he
anticipated that a summary would be initiated
.
The company had a student tourism certificate granted or renewed in 2019, but it did not declare to Tourism the providers with which it was going to operate in 2020. Nor did it upload trips to Cancun in the application system, nor did it present the parents with proof of zero installment payment, the first installment paid.
This is an "administrative" issue.
But from that ministry they clarified that "the main problem is
the negative PCR that in the end were positive
."
Beyond the Moon Travel case, they assured that "
there will be
absolutely
no travel ban for graduates.
There is talk of paying the PCR and confinement in hotels upon arrival. There will also be fewer flights to discourage than in general, not only graduates , Argentines do not go abroad. "
Depending on the result of this summary, the company could receive a fine and / or the cancellation of the permits to operate.
Also, in the event that evidence is found that the PCRs were forged, you could be subject to
a criminal complaint
.
Mexico's response
The Undersecretary of Prevention and Health Promotion of Mexico, Hugo López-Gatell Ramírez, told the media in that country that at least 44 Argentine graduates who visited Quintana Roo went to "a private laboratory that
did not have technical authorization to operate.
" .
Regarding why these boys and girls had a negative PCR on boarding and later it was confirmed that they were infected, the Mexican official pointed out that "it could be a laboratory error, a test that gave a false positive at the beginning" (NdR: refers to a false negative, which the test gave that they were not infected when they already were).
He also detailed that "this type of thing happens precisely when there are participants, entities or private laboratories that
do not follow the appropriate protocols
."
From February 17 to this Monday,
35 schools traveled to Cancun
through one of the travel agencies that handles contingents of graduates abroad: Moon Travel.
Juan Román Riquelme's son is among the graduates who returned from abroad and over the weekend he was in the Boca box.
The son of the Buenos Aires deputy head of government, Diego Santilli, and the journalist Nancy Pazos, is also one of the infected students.
The testimony of a father
"My son is one of those infected and the PCR was carried out in the place where the company took them,"
Eduardo Raimondi, father of another of these young people
, tells
Clarín
.
The agency, in his case, is also Moon Travel, which did not respond to inquiries from this newspaper.
Eduardo's son attends the Wellspring School in Pilar.
Most of those infected belong to that town and to Del Viso, also in the northern area of the Buenos Aires suburbs.
"In the case of this school, a contingent of 40 boys, to be able to embark on the outward journey they have to have a negative private PCR (from a laboratory). That is, it
was paid and each one of them went with the certificate
, 72 hours before boarding. It was done, it happened on February 27. They returned on 7. On March 4, they were given a PCR test in Cancun, which if it had been positive they could not board. They
all tested negative, 100%
", details this father , who did not start a WhatsApp group with the parents of his son's classmates and decided to go out alone to talk about this issue.
"In these days other schools began to arrive and the mothers commented: 'Be careful because the PCR they do in Cancun are tricks and here when they arrive they become positive.'
All the alarms go off,
" he says.
As detailed, for the test in Mexico the family of each student disbursed $ 100.
In his son's contingent, two students tested positive in Ezeiza.
"But it is also important to take into account that 10 had had Covid between December and January with which it is very likely that they had antibodies and have not been infected because of that," he said.
"When we found out, we found out that at Brick school there were 32 positives, at Saint Matthews, 26, at Saint Johns, 15. All these contingents between 40-60 boys, we are talking about 70% positive when they arrive in Buenos Aires, that they were 100% negative when they left Cancun, "he says.
The Argentine Ministry of Health reinforced its recommendation to discourage non-essential foreign travel - including tourism - after these 44 cases of Covid-19 were reported on Saturday on the same plane returning from Cancun.
ACE
Look also
Riquelme's son was in La Bombonera after returning from Cancun
Infected graduates: another 55 cases of Covid are detected, 35 schools traveled to Cancun and there is talk of PCR truchos