Three Australian medic published in the journal Thorax article, describing them witnessed the outbreak COVID-19 aboard an expeditionary cruise ship, heading from Argentina and Antarctica.
The ship had to proceed to the Antarctic Peninsula on the route of the expedition the British Explorer Ernest Shackleton left the Argentine port of Ushuaia in mid-March, after the outbreak of the pandemic. All the passengers, the scientists and team members prior to boarding were checked for the presence of symptoms of coronavirus infection, and those who in the previous three weeks was visited by “risky” countries, generally were not allowed on Board. But such precautions proved insufficient.
On the eighth day of the voyage one of the passengers had a fever, after which the ship was entered quarantine had to be isolated in their cabins, and to wear masks. A team of scientists engaged in vehicle maintenance and isolated passengers, and they used the full suits of protection when contact with patients and respirators — when communicating with other passengers. However, it did not help, and in the following days, the symptoms appeared from several passengers and crew members.
The ship was already near the Antarctic Peninsula, headed for Uruguay, where he cast anchor in the port of Montevideo on the thirteenth day of the voyage. The symptoms during this time part of the cases have already passed, and six people who still had a temperature, was tested using a delivered on Board the rapid antibody tests, all with negative results.
Cases however continued, and in the following days the ship had to be evacuated eight people who were in serious condition, and all eight if PCR testing were identified COVID-19.
Full PCR test 217 aboard passengers and crew members was conducted by Uruguayan authorities only on the twentieth day and was exposed a total of 128 patients. Moreover, this number includes all those six people who have the antibody test showed a negative result. And that is no less interesting — in ten cases of the two lived in the same cabin passengers a positive test result was only one. The symptoms of these 128 were observed only twenty-four, including those who were previously evacuated. That is, 81% of the patients were carrying the disease without symptoms.
On day 28 the ship left there were citizens of Australia and New Zealand, and on the 32nd day and all the rest.
Scientists, however, have published your article not to share experiences of an unusual voyage, and used the experience and information as a basis for research from which to draw conclusions about the features of flash COVID-19 at sea KRU��all courts about the unreliability of the use of rapid tests during the acute phase of the disease, and a high percentage of asymptomatic patients. In addition, on the basis of the detection of the disease only one of the two neighbors in the cabin, doctors have suggested that PCR tests may give a large percentage of false-negative results.
