COVID Case #19 Update: Cross Contamination May Have Occurred
On Friday, a nineteenth case of COVID-19 was detected in Belize, after almost eight weeks without a positive case. The test results of a swab taken from a twenty-seven-year-old male, who disembarked with others from a Royal Caribbean Cruise Line ship on May twenty-third, came back positive for the virus. The result took Belizeans by surprise because the passengers were said to be isolated at sea for over two months, their temperatures were taken twice daily on the ship and persons who displayed any signs of respiratory illness or common cold were screened and tested. But Doctor Marvin Manzanero explains how there may have been cross contamination.
Dr. Marvin Manzanero, Director of Health Services
“We were the ones who had said that the ship had been assailed for a good amount of time. And I don’t have all the particulars as yet, but what we have been able to ascertain is that there would have been what we would call maybe cross contamination, which means that not everybody on that ship that docked here arrived on the ship at the same time. So that the ship had been assail, but people were placed in that ship from other cruise ships at different intervals. You would recall that in this particular instance with these first persons that came, we did not get a full report until the Friday before the ship docked on Saturday, but we felt that Belizeans needed to come back and go through that process. So we did not have all the particulars with these ten initial persons. Persons that arrived one week ago, that’s a separate process; they did send all the particulars. But we are still going to go back and do an interview to see at what point in time they were placed on that ship and how long they were actually there. Even though there’s an almost absolute quarantine facility, we understand that they had some shared, for example when they were out eating; they did say that they were allowed to play board games so they were not a complete quarantine locked up in a room kinda situation. That’s why we would say that there is a cross contamination. I don’t have the full listing, but it seems that even from that small group of ten, they came from a good amount of ships into Rhapsody of the Sea, which is the ship that if you look at that itinerary how long they have been at sea, granted they may have been at sea two three months, but it is how people started coming into that ship that eventually came and docked here.”
On Saturday, the nine other persons in the group were allowed to go home, but have to self-isolate. Later this week, a subsequent test will be done on these persons, as well as patient nineteen, to determine their COVID-19 status. Case number nineteen is asymptomatic and remains in quarantine at the Radisson. According to Director of Health Services Doctor Marvin Manzanero, contact tracing data suggests that each person was low to zero risk in contracting the virus.
