Pablo Sigal
08/29/2021 6:01 AM
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 08/29/2021 6:01 AM
A Buenos Aires family traveled to Miami to vaccinate their youngest daughter with Pfizer and after returning they
lived an odyssey
.
Despite the fact that
four
Covid
tests
gave her negative since she
never had symptoms
, the 15-year-old teenager had to remain isolated for 10 days at the Hotel Presidente, which is used to house Argentines who arrive in Ezeiza and test positive.
Clarín
spoke with the father, who told what happened: from the initial antigen test that
was positive at the airport
to a
judicial presentation
to allow a private laboratory to corroborate that result when the girl was already staying at the hotel.
The minor spent the entire time of confinement accompanied by her 19-year-old brother, who held the role of guardian.
The family preferred to remain anonymous, but provided
Clarín with
all the documentation that supports this
maze of swabs and contradictory results
.
Sources from the Buenos Aires government confirmed that the episode existed, but that the answers offered to the family were based on compliance with the national protocol.
The goal of the girl's father, as he said, is to alert about these distressing situations so
that they are reviewed
.
And if there are errors, they can be corrected.
The man is an engineer and works for an American biotech company.
His concern, based on the case of his daughter, was based on the possibility that there are more false positives without it being known.
Miami-Buenos Aires
The teenager took the
first test in Miami
, 30 hours before flying to Buenos Aires, to have the result on the day of the return trip:
August 10
.
The PCR analysis was performed at the Nomi Health laboratory in Salt Lake City and the result
was negative
.
Upon landing in Ezeiza, she was subjected to an antigen test, as well as her entire family, and she was the only one who tested positive.
The first PCR performed in Miami before flying was negative.
Then they transferred her to the hotel, located in Cerrito 835, where she was isolated in the care of her 19-year-old brother.
The father asked for a PCR to be done to confirm the result, but
had no response
.
Actually, PCR is routinely performed on positives for the Malbrán to determine
the variant
.
This result is usually delayed until after the isolation is completed.
The load of the Ezeiza antigen test in the SISA.
For this reason, the engineer
insisted on doing an
urgent
PCR
on his daughter privately. He hired the services of the Biochemical Laboratory Dr. Filippelli Salazar, who were present at the Hotel Presidente to practice swabbing. But upon arrival they found the
entry prohibited
. They tried hours later one more time, with no luck. The father then decided to go to the
National Juvenile Justice
.
On August 12, Court No. 5, headed by Amalia Fontinovo, issued a habeas corpus for the hotel to authorize the entry of private health personnel to
carry out the PCR
on the isolated girl, who was
still without symptoms
. In the meantime, according to the father, the family had given the teenager (mixed between clothes and food) an Abbott rapid test, which
also came back negative
.
Finally and after almost a day of waiting, the medical assistants managed to enter
with the court order
issued to the Hotel Presidente to take two samples, one for the antigen test (this time it was from Roche) and the other for a PCR.
Both tests were negative, according to the documentation accessed by
Clarín
.
The PCR carried out by the Filippelli laboratory.
However, that same night the volunteers who work at the hotel to control guests with Covid extended to the family a copy with the burden of the case in the Integrated Argentine Health Information System (SISA), made by the Malbrán Institute, where it appears not only that the girl was infected, but that she
had the Delta variant
.
The burden of the Malbrán PCR in the SISA.
A striking fact was the speed with which the Malbrán result was known (48 hours, variant included), something that usually takes longer.
Clarín
learned that people without symptoms isolated in hotels after their
return from abroad
have insistently called that diagnostic center to request that they accelerate the PCR and finish confirming whether
the continuity of the confinement
was necessary
.
In this specific episode, not only the Justice intervened, but also the
United States Embassy
, based on a contact established by the father.
An email signed by Nathan Flook, from the American Citizen Services Unit, explains that the key to the conflict was held by the Ministry of Health of the Nation and not that of the City, with which the man had been in contact.
The little room the girl and her brother shared.
Finally, there was not much more to do.
The
ten days passed
and the supposed one infected with the Delta variant spent them isolated until she was able to go home.
Her brother, despite having lived with her in a small room, with the supposed Delta variant circulating in the environment,
never contracted the virus
.
Is there a possibility that it was a false positive?
Clarín
reviewed some publications in this regard.
A review in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, authored by Jacqueline Dinnes of the University of Birmingham, indicates that antigen tests identify an average of 72 percent of symptomatic cases and
58 percent of asymptomatic ones
.
The younger's brother, who accompanied her during her stay at the hotel.
With regard specifically to the asymptomatic, the conclusion was that in a population of 10,000 people without symptoms, among whom 50 people actually had Covid (0.5 percent), between 24 and 35 people would be correctly identified.
And the tests would be expected to yield 125-213 positive results
and 90-189 false positives
.
The Presidente Hotel building, in Cerrito 835. Photo: Guillermo Rodriguez Adami
The proportion of false positives increases statistically as
the incidence of the virus decreases
in society. Possibilities - presumably always marginal - may include accidental contamination of a sample, faulty handling, or involuntary administrative exchange. The case in question would reveal an uncertainty of the
state correction
mechanism
in the event of a first wrong result.
The asymptomatic who arrives from abroad and must comply by official decision with hotel isolation after testing positive for Covid, has no choice but to
trust
.
The
greater precision
of these controls is always a guarantee of their effectiveness and credibility.
On the contrary, a deficit adjustment
modulates the suspicion
of those who inevitably become the suffering incarnation of the margin of error.
$
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