And so while patient 7 is conscious and not on a ventilator, three Ministry of Health teams in San Ignacio are tracing his contacts. And, contact tracing also has to do with rumour tracing. This weekend, after Hubert Pipersburgh died, that meant following a social media story that Pipersburgh and patient 1 had contact at a birthday party in San Ignacio on the day she arrived in the country, March 19th. The story went that this was being kept a secret from health authorities, so that she would not be charged for violating her quarantine.
Well, it turns out that's just a story. The woman in the picture at the party is not contact 1. Manzanero explained:
Dr. Marvin Manzanero - Director of Health Services
"In our mapping exercise which was done for Patient #1 and Patient #4, we did not find that connection. It's still a prevalent kind of situation happening there, so the people that are in the photos, lots of photos have been sent to us. There is no connection that ties them. They are as we have said even internal to our mapping exercise, we were able to trace at what time Patient #1 arrived, what flight she took to San Pedro, who picked her up and took her home and at what time that happened. The patient that is being circulated in those family photos and that's getting into people's private moments, its not Patient #1."
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