American Seafoods Company announces that 85 crew members of the “American Triumph” have tested positive for COVID-19. All crew members were quarantined for at least 14 days and passed all health protocols prior to boarding the ship. Somehow, however, the virus managed to infect the crew.
The “American Triumph” had left Oregon on June 27 and sailed with 119 crew members to Alaska to fish for saithe. Seven crew members reported suffering from COVID-19 symptoms two weeks after the ship’s departure. After their arrival in Unalaska, they were tested. Six of the seven were positive.
After all the other crew members were tested, 79 more results were positive, bringing the total number of COVID-19 cases on the “American Triumph” to 85, according to a statement from the authorities.
It was not immediately clear how many of the crew members suffered from COVID-19 symptoms before the tests, but American Seafoods spokeswoman Suzanne Lugoni said the company had checked the employees before boarding and no one had showed COVID-19 symptoms before leaving.
The 34 crew members who had tested negative will take a charter flight from Unalaska to Anchorage, where they will undergo quarantine and symptom monitoring, the agency said.
“Immediately after docking in Seward, the entire crew on board the “American Triumph” will be loaded directly into the waiting buses to go directly to their isolation site in Anchorage for further supply and monitoring,” the city of Seward wrote.
The ship will remain in port to be disinfected, the statement said, and a new crew quarantined in Anchorage will board.
Ushuaia: 57 sailors infected with the virus after 35 days at sea
Argentina is trying to solve a medical mystery after 57 sailors were infected with COVID-19 after 35 days at sea, although the entire crew was tested negative before leaving the port. The fishing trawler
However, all crew members had gone through a 14-day mandatory quarantine at a hotel in the city of Ushuaia. Previously, they had negative results, the ministry said in a statement.
“It is difficult to determine how this crew was infected, considering that they had no contact with the mainland for 35 days and that the supplies were only brought from the port of Ushuaia,” said Alejandra Alfaro, the director of primary medical care in Tierra del Furaland.
A team examined “the chronology of symptoms in the crew to determine the chronology of contagion,” she said.
Leandro Ballatore, head of the infectious diseases department at Ushuaia Regional Hospital, said he believed this was a “case that eludes any description in publications because such a long incubation period has not been described anywhere.”
“We can’t explain yet how the symptoms occurred,” Ballatore said. The crew was placed in isolation aboard the ship and returned to the port of Ushuaia.
Heiner Kubny, PolarJournal
