The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) discharged “by mistake” a patient infected with covid-19 coronavirus in San Antonio (Texas, USA), as explained on Sunday the mayor of the city, Ron Nirenberg in his Twitter account.
“Today we learn that the CDC mistakenly released a patient from the Center for Infectious Diseases of Texas who later tested positive for covid-19,” says the message from Nirenberg. “The fact that the CDC allowed the population to be exposed to a patient with a coronavirus is unacceptable,” adds the Texan mayor.
Nirenberg details that the person in question has been quarantined, while trying to find out where he went and with whom he maintained contact after being discharged. “We will do everything in our power to ensure that the community remains safe and the risk of exposure remains low,” he adds.
The incubation period is not what WHO says
For their part, in a statement issued on Sunday, the CDC explained that the individual had been placed in isolation while receiving treatment at a local medical center for several weeks after returning to the United States. from Wuhan (Hubei, China). They did not say how many weeks, but as far as we know in the US, they are only waiting 14 days to discharge a person, since important researchers indicate that the incubation period can be up to 29 days or more, according to a renowned Chinese epidemiologist who was in charge of the SARS epidemic.
The patient was discharged because he fulfilled the necessary requirements, including two negative results in the coronavirus test 24 hours apart, and had no symptoms of the disease. However, the results of a subsequent sample were then received and “were weakly positive”, so it was isolated again as a preventive measure.
“It is important to remember that this is a new virus and we are learning more about it every day,” says the CDC statement. “The covid-19 infection cycle is not yet well known, but the amount of the virus is usually greater when the person is sicker,” he adds, detailing that as the patient recovers “the amount of the virus decreases.”
The US agency concludes the message by stating that the cycle of virological infection in this patient “is longer than what has been previously seen.”
