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Researchers report Covid outbreak at isolated Antarctic station
- xg15 5y agoSounds interesting but seems to be behind a paywall unfortunately, so I can only guess about the contents. This reminds me of a similar incident I read about some time in summer 2020. If I remember correctly, it was about a container vessel on which people were catching Covid, even though the vessel had been at sea for weeks and everyone had tested negative before. Any idea what's going on in those incidents?
- tghdbd 5y ago
- quickthrowman 5y agoTFA: Polar researchers in remote Antarctica have fallen victim to coronavirus, despite taking strict health precautions, being fully vaccinated and miles from civilization. Two thirds of the 25 staff based in Belgium's Princess Elisabeth Polar Station have caught Covid, the Le Soir newspaper reported, proving there is no escape from the global pandemic. The Omicron outbreak happened despite all staff passing multiple PCR tests, quarantining and living in one of the most remote places in the world. The situation has echoes of the plot of John Carpenter's 1982 horror classic The Thing, which was advertised with the slogan “man is the warmest place to hide”. An alien life form infects workers on an Antarctic station in the cult Sci fi chiller, which starred Kurt Russell. Unlike the film, none of the infected Belgians have exhibited any severe symptoms - let alone been transformed into bloodthirsty beasts that can only be killed by incineration. All 25 researchers were fully vaccinated and one had a booster shot. Before leaving for the station, they underwent a PCR test in Belgium two hours before flying to South Africa. In South Africa, they quarantined for ten days and took another PCR test. A further test was needed when leaving Cape Town for Antarctica and a final one five days after that. One person tested positive seven days after arriving at the station on December 14. The person was isolated but tests revealed two others had caught the virus. The three were evacuated on December 23 but the virus has continued to spread. It is thought to be the Omicron variant because that is responsible for 99 per cent of infections in South Africa. There are two emergency doctors at the station, which will not allow any new arrivals until the virus dissipates. Belgium’s Polar Secretariat has decided the research season will be shortened and that staff shall stay there until at least until January 12, when new expeditions will arrive.
- Niksko 5y agoBased on the full article below: nothing to see here. Researcher tested positive after 7 days of being in Antarctica, after a negative PCR test at day 5. Slow incubation period, unexpected but not impossible
- landemva 5y agoUSMC could not keep it out of boot camp, and they can enforce their isolation and PPE rules. https://news.usni.org/2020/04/30/marines-suffer-covid-19-outbreak-at-san-diego-boot-camp https://news.usni.org/2020/04/30/marines-suffer-covid-19-out... Everyone is going to be exposed. Make your peace and optionally do something today to get your body more healthy to fight it off. Take a walk. Lose that 30 pounds of belly.
- al2o3cr 5y agoMac wants the flamethrower!
- Arete314159 5y agoI am high-risk, and PCR tests are imperfect, so a year ago I set about trying to answer the question: How long would a quarantine have to last to truly guarantee safety? Or at least, guarantee safety within an acceptable margin of error (like a .001% risk)? I looked at research papers from the beginning of the pandemic. I don't remember the exact statistics, but it was something like: 95% of cases became positive within 14 days. But then a few outlier ones became positive through day 22. And then there were a very few freak cases that turned positive after 30 days or so. Even if you threw out the super-outliers after day 22, you're still left with about 5% of cases showing up in week 3. I believe some Asian countries are requiring 3 week quarantines for this reason. However, in the US, we've pushed quarantine to 10 days, and most recently 5 days (?!?!). And there's still the issue of asymptomatic cases. A person could get asymptomatically ill on Day 22, and maybe a PCR test would still fail. In that case, we'd have to wait 10 days for their symptoms to resolve. So we're at least 32 days out for a true "quarantine." Round it up to 40 for good measure and we're back to where we started in the middle ages -- the word "quarantine" comes from the word for "forty," meaning 40 days quarantine to prevent the Black Death from spreading. I don't know how likely the scenario is of a person turning positive on day 22, and then a PCR test failing to pick it up. The problem is, nobody seems to know that, because the research showing how UNsafe we are (potentially) is strongly disincentivized. The CDC keeps reducing quarantine time in a naked tribute to business interests. And yes, I use the word "tribute" intentionally. I volunteer as Tribute....for The Economy. Omicron in general tends to have a shorter incubation period, but obviously not always. From what I glean from this article, it appears one individual got sick 17 days after starting the quarantine process -- again, well within the 22 day incubation period of the original sars-cov-2. It would be great to know now what the outer incubation period is of Delta and Omicron, but we don't, because it's not in anyone's interest for us to know. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair
- rapjr9 5y agoAnother thing we don't seem to know is if infection from fomites with Omicron is more likely than it was for previous variants. Particularly in a cold climate it seems possible someone touched something and got Omicron from that. The medical community has barely embraced the aerosol spread of Sars-Cov-2 and there seem to be no new studies of spread via surfaces since the early days of the pandemic (and there weren't many then either).
- 3guk 5y agoLink that isn't hiding behind paywall- https://archive.is/dGn3n https://archive.is/dGn3n