A Guantánamo pastor was held in various COVID-19 isolation centres despite having negative PCR tests.

On January 18, 2021, pastor García Tamari, a 79-year-old man who suffers from pulmonary emphysema and hypertension, was taken to the Guantanamo provincial hospital because he was presenting problems in walking. Moreover, since he was emerging from facial paralysis, the family thought he was having neurological problems.The family was concerned as they feared that his condition could worsen if he was infected with coronavirus. They took him to the emergency room where he had blood tests and X-rays done, then he was sent to the Internal Medicine ward, then to the Febrile cases ward (where diseases like dengue are treated). He was told that he had a bacterial infection, specifically pneumonia and kidney infection. He was admitted to ward 5 E where they began to give him antibiotics for the two infections. On January 20 they performed the rapid Covid-19 test (the Chinese test using a drop of blood) on him which came out positive and the subsequent PCR test that came out positive as well. He was sent to the Isolation centre of the University of Arts (EVA). At EVA they did not have antibiotics for his infections, nor were they instructed to give them to any patient, therefore he was sent to another Isolation centre located at the University of Guantánamo (the Teachers’ Training Centre) where they also did not have antibiotics nor guidance to use medicine other than the one for treatment of Covid-19. Later on, the pastor was sent to the Isolation centre of the Vocational School (IPVC) but the staff over there was also not able to administer other medicine than the one for Covid-19. On January 25 the pastor was sent to hospital, without having received any medicine during those past days, not even for treatment of coronavirus. Before leaving the IPVC, a second PCR test was done. On January 25 the pastor and his wife did not eat or drink anything from 9 AM to 9 PM as they waited in the hospital. When the family found out, they sent them food. Immediately afterwards, the family began to complain by telephone to all health and government agencies and the hospital management. The representatives of these institutions claimed they did not have any room where the pastor could receive treatment with antibiotics. Subsequently, a cholera room was cleaned and the pastor was placed there along with other patients diagnosed with coronavirus. They performed a rapid antigen test on pastor's wife, which came back negative and she was sent home. After having rolled through three isolation centres, she managed to get out without being infected with the virus. On the morning of January 27, a family friend told the pastor’s wife that he had access to data from the pastor's PCR which indicated that the PCR test came out negative on January 25 and all along. This information was presented in the Summary Table of Updated Guantánamo Results with the code: 12917. The family began to call again all the health and government institutions to ask for the pastor to be discharged given the fact that the database of the Provincial Centre of Hygiene and Epidemiology indicated that the two PCRs that were performed on pastor on January 20 and 25 were negative, pointing to the fact that that pastor never had the virus. However, the ward doctors said they had no information that the PCR was negative and that they would not let him go. The family visited all the health agencies again and experienced first-hand the disorganisation of the Guantanamo health system, as each institution asserted that it had nothing to do with the case. Due to the insistence of the family, the Provincial Centre of Hygiene and Epidemiology finally sent the information on the negative PCR test to them and the pastor was discharged, however suffered from intense psychological trauma.