Three Australian medical doctors published an article in Thorax Magazine about the COVID-19 outbreak they witnessed aboard an expeditionary cruise ship heading from Argentina and Antarctica..

The ship was supposed to proceed to the Antarctic Peninsula along the expedition route of the British explorer Ernest Shackleton and left the Argentine port of Ushuaia in mid-March, after the pandemic. All passengers, scientists and team members were checked for symptoms of coronavirus infection before boarding, and those who visited the “risky” countries in the previous three weeks were not allowed to board. But such precautions were inadequate..

On the eighth day of sailing, one of the passengers had a fever, after which quarantine was introduced on the ship - everyone had to isolate themselves in their cabins and wear masks. The team and scientists were engaged in servicing the ship and isolated passengers, while they used full protective suits when dealing with patients and respirators - when communicating with other passengers. However, this did not help either, and in the following days several more passengers and crew members showed symptoms.

The ship, already at the Antarctic Peninsula, headed for Uruguay, where it anchored in the port of Montevideo on the thirteenth day of sailing. Symptoms have already passed in some patients, and six people who still had fever were tested with the help of rapid antibody tests delivered on board, all with a negative result.

The cases of the disease nevertheless continued, and in the following days, eight people who were in serious condition had to be evacuated from the ship, and all eight were detected by PCR testing with COVID-19.

Full PCR testing of 217 passengers and crew members on board was carried out by the Uruguayan authorities on the twentieth day only, and a total of 128 cases were removed. Moreover, this number included all those six people whose antibody test showed a negative result. And no less interesting - in ten cases out of two passengers living in the same cabin, only one had a positive test result. Symptoms of these 128 people were observed in only twenty-four, including those who had previously been evacuated.. That is, 81% of patients suffered an asymptomatic disease.

On day 28, the citizens of Australia and New Zealand who were there left the ship, and on day 32 all the rest.

Scientists, however, did not publish their article in order to share their impressions of unusual sailing, but used the experience and information as a basis for research from which they concluded about the features of the COVID-19 flash on cruise ships sailing, about the unreliability of using the express. In addition, based on the cases of detection of the disease in only one of the two cabin neighbors, doctors have suggested that PCR tests can give a large percentage of false negative results.

Source: PopMechanics.