Dry, cold and windy. This is the most remote continent in the world . Due to its inaccessibility, there had been no cases of COVID-19 in Antarctica. Now, unfortunately, the population that resides in scientific stations has confirmed multiple cases of the virus in one of them.
An outbreak in Antarctica
Isolation had been a protective guarantor of the pandemic for the past year, but this week they reported their first 36 positive cases in a remote Chilean base surrounded by oceans and icebergs. The virus was detected in 26 Chilean military personnel and 10 maintenance workers at the Bernardo O’Higgins Riquelme General Base in the Antarctic Peninsula , after being examined because some of them had presented habitual symptoms of coronavirus.
The patients who have tested positive were in a group of 60 people who have already been evacuated from the base to the Chilean city of Punta Arenas and since then they have been in isolation and tracking all their contacts.
In constant vigilance
Base personnel “are already properly isolated and constantly monitored” by health authorities in Magallanes, in Chilean Patagonia, the army said, adding that there have been no complications yet.
The base, located at the northernmost point of the Antarctic Peninsula, is the capital of the Chilean Antarctic commune Antarctica. It is also known as Puerto Covadonga and was established in 1948. The General Bernardo O’Higgins Riquelme base has capacity for 60 people, although the population usually varies between 16 in winter and 44 in summer. It is located near the northernmost tip of the Antarctic Peninsula in West Antarctica, far from Australian bases in East Antarctica and a difficult place to reach even in Antarctic terms.
Research and military stations in Antarctica, among the most remote in the world, had done everything possible in recent months to keep the virus away from this location, canceling tourism, reducing activities and personnel, and blocking facilities. The bases are small, with people living in close contact, and the movement generally accelerates in the austral summer, which began in November, when new supplies and people arrive on the mainland while others leave. The continent has been free of the new coronavirus and the need for social distancing practices longer than anywhere else on Earth. Up to now.
The Chilean Navy also claimed to have detected three cases of COVID among the 208 crew members of a ship that had sailed in the Antarctic region between November 27 and December 10.
Implications
“The detection of cases of COVID-19 in Antarctica will have an impact on a variety of areas, from planning and logistics of human activity on the continent to making high – level decisions , ” he told ABC NEWS Hanne Nielsen the University of Tasmania, who is part of a project examining the impact of the coronavirus in Antarctica. He also explained that “the presence of COVID-19 in Antarctica also has implications for local wildlife, with the threat of humans transmitting the virus to other species.”
Map of the coronavirus in the world
As of Wednesday, more than 78 million cases of the coronavirus have been reported worldwide, according to data from Johns Hopkins University (USA). Of all of them, the United States exceeds 18 million cases of COVID-19, followed by India and Brazil.
