Mystery as Argentine sailors infected with virus after 35 days at sea

However, all of the crew members had undergone 14 days of mandatory quarantine at a hotel in the city of Ushuaia. Prior to that, they had negative results, the ministry said in a statement.

The story is poorly written, but it looks like they picked it up while under quarantine at the hotel.

A simple explanation is that testing was inadequate and an asymptomatic carrier got through and spread it to others, who may also have been asymptomatic before spreading it further.

Mysterious? Yeah. If you have zero imagination sure.

The story is poorly written, but it looks like they picked it up while under quarantine at the hotel.

It says they returned to port AFTER some had shown symptoms.

The Echizen Maru fishing trawler

And why does it have a Japanese name?

Opinionator:

That could well be. In that case, it's a bit scary.

Pukey2Today  05:22 pm JST

The story is poorly written, but it looks like they picked it up while under quarantine at the hotel.

It says they returned to port AFTER some had shown symptoms.

Not quite. The story says "some of its crew began exhibiting symptoms typical of COVID-19."

The story is a little muddy. It says:

However, all of the crew members had undergone 14 days of mandatory quarantine at a hotel in the city of Ushuaia. Prior to that, they had negative results, the ministry said in a statement.

So while some of them had symptoms typical of COVID-19 when they got off the ship, that does not necessarily prove anything. The way it reads to me is that they were tested before they went into 14-day quarantine and came up negative, but then showed up positive, presumably at the end of the 14 days.

That could mean what Opinionator said, that one or more asymptomatic carriers got a false negative - quite possible - or that most of them picked it up during the hotel quarantine.

But if they developed it while at sea, this could be another strain with a longer incubation period, and was missed with faulty testing before the ship departed.

And why does it have a Japanese name?

The vessel specialises in surimi and frozen fish, and was built in Kagawa, It belonged to a Buenos Aires-based subsidiary of Nissui until 2015. The surviving company and its Argentinian parent both have at least one Japanese director each.

It's in the seafood, especially fresh/uncooked. (?)

Reinfection anybody?

I suppose there could be "false negative" tests...and despite testing negative, the person in fact had the virus.

The tests or perhaps the swabs weren't accurate.

I'm having a hard time with the time line of the events. The way I'm reading it the crew as all tested in port, then entered a 14 day quarantine. All the tests came back negative. Next they sailed to go fishing and while at sea developed symptoms of Covid-19? Is that correct? Is it possible something among their supplies was contaminated and this is the source of their infection?

supplies were only brought in from the port of Ushuaia

The virus was on the supplies

It can live on surfaces for plenty long enough to infect people, saw something else that it can live in shoes for up to 9 days... but my bet would also be that it was on the supplies loaded on the boat just before departure. Or someone had a sneaky pint at the local pub during quarantine.

It can live on surfaces for plenty long enough to infect people, saw something else that it can live in shoes for up to 9 days...

The current thinking amongst scientists is that while it can live on surfaces for lengthy periods of time, surface transmission is rare due to the tiny viral load.

It happened in other countries that 'night workers' visited people in their hotel during quarantine. Now, they are sailers. I would check this first...

False negative test or to prior to departure. None of the tests used are 100% accurate.

that personJuly 14  10:58 pm JST ****supplies were only brought in from the port of Ushuaia

The virus was on the supplies

Unlikely. The virus doesn't survive that long on hard or solid surfaces.

"The new coronavirus "does not spread easily" from touching surfaces or objects, according to updated wording on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) website."

https://www.livescience.com/cdc-coronavirus-surfaces-update.html