Centroamérica / Politics

A Suspicious Coronavirus Case Reveals the Inefficiencies of the Nicaraguan Government’s Response to the Epidemic


Friday, March 27, 2020
Iván Olivares

FSLN supporters march in Nicaragua. Photo from Confidencial. 
FSLN supporters march in Nicaragua. Photo from Confidencial. 

Editor's note: This story was originally published by Confidencial

A complaint on social networks, by a woman who claimed to be held in Managua’s German Nicaraguan hospital without being told if she was a coronavirus carrier or not, forced Nicaraguan Vice President Rosario Murillo to declare on Sunday that a “person who is not asymptomatic … decided to abandon isolation with their family.” The episode hints at the inefficiency of the Nicaraguan regime and the health authorities who are handling the covid-19 crisis in the country while shrouded in the same secrecy with which most of this presidency has been handled. 

In the video recorded on Saturday night, the woman, who claims to work in a beauty salon owned by a person named Osiel Herrera, lamented being locked up at the hospital and repeatedly mentions that her sister and another person visited her and brought her juices and food before the police took them away. 

“I’ve been here since 6:30 on Friday, because of the positive coronavirus case in the hair salon I work at. I’ve been here for more than 24 hours, and they don’t give us an answer. Four more people have come in who had close contacts with Osiel Herrera, including two Cubans who came here on Saturday, got tested, and were discharged,” the woman says. 

The young woman adds that, on Thursday, March 12, after returning from Colombia, Herrera arrived “at the office at 5:30 in the afternoon, sick,” which calls into question the effectiveness of the detection system that the Nicaraguan Health Ministry activated at the country’s main entryways, said Health Minister Carolina Davila and Carlos Saenz, Secretary General of the Health Ministry. 

In a conference, Davila said that Nicaragua continues “to strengthen work at all border, land, air and sea points. We are activating surveillance among passengers coming from those countries and we’ll ask them if they’ve shown any symptoms and follow up with them” with calls and visits to their homes for two weeks, to see how their cases evolve. 

For his part, Saenz also highlighted how the border detection network operates. Both the first detected case and the second passed through that detection network, without having been found, after returning from Panama and Colombia. 

Asking for help

While she watched other patients being ruled out as carriers, the woman and three other people were still adrift. 'They didn’t tell us if we are positive or negative,' she said. 'They didn’t give us an answer. They won’t let me go, knowing that I'm going to comply with a quarantine, if they assign it… If we are positive, and that is why they have us in this center, we need to know it, to receive treatment, and if we are negative, they need to let us go home, bathe, eat, sleep,' she says, sobbing. 

In the end, that’s what happened. In her Sunday morning speech, Murillo admitted that “in one of the country's hospital centers we had a case of a person who was asymptomatic but who was linked or associated with case number two that we reported yesterday. It’s a suspicious case, without symptoms. The person has decided to abandon isolation with her family, and the hospital is currently discharging her.” 

On Friday, Murillo said that the case was complicated, because patient number two also had diabetes, hypertension, and is an HIV carrier.

It is not known whether the decision to discharge the complainant happened as a reaction to the public exposure caused by the video broadcast, or if it was in response to an express request made to someone in government.

In the video, the woman says that Abel Herrera Núñez, another Nicaraguan being held in the hospital with her, called Camila Ortega's personal assistant, asking for help. “But they didn’t give them the results of his exams,” she said. “They didn’t give them anything. They called the director of this center, to give us the results. '

Predictably, after being discharged, the complainant went to a private hospital, and paid for the examination “because I think the doctors there are trained.” She claims that there must be more coronavirus carriers in the beauty professional circuit, based on the behaviors she describes. 

'Because of poor hygiene, and because we’re not given face masks, hand sanitizer, liquid soap, and antiseptic hand soap, that’s why we’re here, because my boss prohibited all those hygiene elements in the workplace, even though I asked him to. I asked him to avoid such close contact with the clients of the Osiel Herrera beauty salon, and he did not comply,” she claimed.

The young woman said Herrera arrived ill at the office on March 12. “He came back on Saturday, sick. Monday, I was sick. He had a strong cough, high temperatures, and pain in his heart. The doctors said nothing to him. Wednesday, he came back to the salon, risking all of his worker’s health.” 

That motivated two employees to leave the job. 'They stopped coming because of the symptoms he had. They stopped working. I had to show up to work, because he told me that what I had was hysteria, that he had to send those who were sick to rest. He said clients were going to think that the room was infected.” 

“Gentlemen, the room was infected. We had to clean it,” she said. “Are we infected? I don’t know. We don't know. Are we negative? We don't know,' she said before adding that she “hopes and trusts Jehovah God, as my father says, that everything is fine.” 

In any case, workers at the salon wouldn’t be the only ones exposed to the virus. The young woman said, “A while ago another one person infected by the virus went to the hospital, along with several of his close contacts, and they were tested. They are still there. ”

'The person made the decision, she and her family, to get out of isolation, which ... is a protective measure ... since it is a suspicious case, without confirmation yet, but it is a suspicious case because she has been in contact with one of the two confirmed cases. She made the decision, releasing the Ministry of Health from responsibility, and has been discharged,” Murillo reiterated.

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