Argentine health officials are attempting to understand how several dozen fishermen contracted the coronavirus even though they have been at sea for 35 days.
The Echizen Maru fishing ship was forced to return to port after 57 sailors began exhibiting signs of the virus. Health officials in the southern Tierra del Fuego province are baffled by the disease’s transmission because all the men quarantined for two weeks and tested negative before embarking on the trip.
“It’s hard to establish how this crew was infected, considering that for 35 days, they had no contact with dry land,” Alejandra Alfaro, the director of primary healthcare in Tierra del Fuego, said. “Supplies were only brought in from the port of Ushuaia.”
A team of health officials in the South American nation is working on a “chronology” of what transpired.
Leandro Ballatore, the head of the infectious diseases department at Ushuaia Regional Hospital, said the outbreak defies “all description in publications because an incubation period this long has not been described anywhere.”
The crew was placed in isolation on the ship and returned to the port of Ushuaia, according to Agence France-Presse.
