Less than an hour after discovering that he tested positive for coronavirus in May, Dr. Jean Robert Ngola was accused of being the source of a COVID-19 outbreak in Campbellton, New Brunswick, after his confidential physical fitness data leaked into social media.
But research through CBC’s The Fifth Estate and Radio-Canada shows new touch search data that casts doubt on the certainty with which Ngola knew as “patient zero” in the outbreak that has resulted in more than 40 CASES of COVID-19 and two deaths.and highlights dozens of others in the northern New Brunswick network that would possibly have brought the virus to the region.
Ngola’s legal team also showed CBC documents indicating that some of the other people Ngola contacted while on vacation in Quebec did not have the virus. Ngola had traveled to the neighboring province in early May to pick up her four-year-old daughter without informing the hospital where she worked and had not left her when she returned.
“We are going to fight him on the facts. Because on the facts, Jean Robert is not wrong,” said Joel Etienne, a lawyer from Ngola.
Since then, Ngola left Campbellton after weeks of threats he said expelled him from the city he called home for seven years, which is across the Restigouche River from Pointe-a-la-Croix, Quebec.He had more than 2,000 patients in his circle of relatives at the clinic and also worked in shifts in the emergency room at Campbellton Regional Hospital.
At the time of the outbreak, Ngola practically saw patients at her clinic, but treated patients in the emergency room.
“You can go to Campbellton and ask what kind of doctor Dr. Npassla is.I love this population, but in one day everything was destroyed,” said Npassla, 50, a medical graduate from the Democratic Republic of Conpass, Belgium and Laval University in Quebec.
In a two-hour interview, Ngola answered questions about the reasons for her trip to Quebec and described the extent of the racist attacks she suffered and the betrayal she claimed to be felt at the hands of her employer and the province.
The Congolese-Canadian doctor discovered that he had tested positive for COVID-19 for a public fitness government phone call around 11 a.m.May 27 and was surprised that he had no symptoms. An hour later, his clinic staff informed him that his positive verification of the virus had leaked on Facebook and that they called him “patient zero.”
At 2:30 p.m. Update of the provincial pandemic that day, New Brunswick Prime Minister Blaine Higgs showed 3 cases of COVID-19, adding a child, a man in his 90s and an “irresponsible fitness professional.”The prime minister called Ngola, but publicly accused the “anonymous fitness professional.””to hide their reasons for traveling and break regulations by isolating themselves after their journey.
Two hours later, her employer, Vitality Health Network, suspended Ngola without email payment.Another public fitness nurse called Ngola at five o’clock in the afternoon and informed her that her daughter was also positive at COVID.
At the end of the week, driven by a complaint from the province and Vitality, the RCMP began investigating Ngola for acts of crime.
He accuses the rush of the Prime Minister’s trial and his employer to tarnish his reputation and endanger him.
“It’s more than racism, they are putting my life at risk,” said Ngola.
His employer, however, claims that the doctor violated the hospital’s COVID-19 protocols.Vitality provided CBC with a copy of a self-assessment checklist emailed to all workers on April 6, indicating that anyone traveling outdoors new Brunswick, with the exception of those traveling from Quebec or Maine, will have to isolate themselves for 14 days upon return.
Ngola said he won the email yet that “there was a lot of confusion” and that the other doctors he worked with had not strayed after traveling outside the province.
“I took precautions, ” he said of his journey.
Once her case became public, Ngola was described as “illness” on Facebook and ordered to “return to Africa.”A Campbellton resident posted a comment that Ngola would be “lynched and dragged down the bridge” in reference to the stretch between Cambellton and Pointe.–la-Croix, Quebec.
Meanwhile, images of your space were posted online.
Residents called 911 with false reports that the doctor had been seen buying groceries at Walmart.Ngola said police showed up at her door to make sure he didn’t rape his 40s.
Not concerned about the invasion of her privacy, Ngola said she didn’t feel “hidden in the basement” with her son.
“I have the worry in my stomach. I don’t know what can happen,” he said.”You know a user, [if] mentally, he’s not right, he can come and do something.And I’m alone with my daughter.”
At the time she tested positive, Ngola only saw patients practically in her clinic, but believes she contracted the virus before a patient while running in the emergency branch of Campbellton Regional Hospital.
“The pandemic is a war and it’s the front line,” he said.”We see asymptomatic patients.”
Currently on the path of the crusade, Higgs ignored the complaint that distinguishing Ngola, even indirectly, is reckless.
“I didn’t have the wisdom of the individual until he gave the impression on social media,” he said.”The fear that I have had this pandemic is that we want to be aware, we rely heavily on our fitness professionals.It was disappointing because it resulted in a scenario where we had two deaths.”
On 30 May, the provincial government and Vitality asked the RCMP to investigate imaginable crime acts committed through Ngola.After a six-week investigation, police made the decision not to press crime charges, but Ngola could face a heavy provincial fine for violating the Emergency Services Act by not isolating himself for 14 days after the trip.He is scheduled to appear at Campbellton Provincial Court on October 26.
RELATED: Ngola describes the effect of filtering your information:
The former lead investigator of the Walkerton infected water scandal says he is on the corner of Ngola Craig Hannaford, a former RCMP officer who is now a personal investigator at Haywood Hunt and Associates in Toronto and was hired through Ngola’s lawyer, spent a month tracking the doctor overnight in Montreal for evidence that may result in Ngola not downloading COVID-19 in Quebec.
Hannaford stated that he had met several fitness staff members who were crossing Quebec from Cambellton and were remote when they returned at about the same time as Ngola.
“The long arm of the state turns out to be pointing the finger [to Ngola], saying, ‘You did it.’Still, it turns out there are all sorts of explanations for how this happened,” Hannaford said.
He said his research took a month, compared to the few hours it took to New Brunswick Public Health in Ngola.
“This is a fair and balanced investigation,” he said.
When Ngola met the team at The Fifth Estate in Quebec, as well as her lawyer, they provided her with more information on the reasons for her trip to Quebec and the precautions she took.
In early May, Ngola said she had a riddle: her former partner, who lives in Montreal, asked her to look after her four-year-old daughter while she was flying to Africa to attend her father’s funeral.Campbellton, who feared that control would not be able to occupy him, asked his younger brother, who is a student in Montreal, to look after the girl for five days while he figured out how to pick her up.
Unsure of Provincial Emergency Services Act regulations, Ngola called the RCMP before her trip, which led her to the COVID helpline in New Brunswick.
Ngola claimed that the operator had told him that, as a worker, he did not have to isolate himself upon his return.
CBC discovered conflicting data on New Brunswick government websites about who deserves to isolate themselves when they return to the province.In a site with guidelines, a segment titled “People Who Are Not Forced to Isolate theMselves” lists healthy citizens who will have to cross the border to access the required services, patients with access to medical care, and parents with shared custody of children.
Ngola also called the CoVID hotline in Quebec for advice and claimed that the user who responded had reminded him to bring a letter stating that he had permission to take his son across the border, but that he did not record his conversations, but he said his mobile phone records.proved that he had made the calls.
On her 30-hour trip, Ngola said she met a total of five people: her daughter, her brother, two doctors, and a service station worker.
On May 12, Ngola left Campbellton after finishing his emergency shift at 4:00 p.m., refueled his car and drove for about nine hours without preventing in Montreal.After a brief verbal exchange with his brother, he fell asleep.The next morning, he left town with his daughter around nine o’clock in the morning
Ngola stated that she had already had a call to the convention with two doctors in Trois-Riviares on 13 May, but that she had to meet with them as a user as she was visiting the city.
They met for 20 minutes, dressed in masks and gloves, and sat two metres away.They discussed a possible task for Ngola at her clinic.The only other impediment Ngola said he made this vacation was at a gas station in La Pocatiére, Quebec.
After refuelling, he went to pay for fuel and food before crossing New Brunswick near Edmundston around 6 p.m.
Ngola said he told peace officials at the border checkpoint that he was a doctor and had traveled overnight to pick up his daughter.He said he won a pamphlet with general commandos on self-isolation.At 91:00, he returned to his home in Campbellton.
Hannaford stated that the doctors in Trois-Riviares did not have COVID-19 or Ngola’s younger brother.
It is possible that the fifth state simply does not touch the doctors to comment, but saw the result of the brother’s negative test.The 36-year-old man took the test at the Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital in Montreal 3 days after Ngola’s own nasal sample.
The CBC also asked Dalhousie University epidemiologist Dr.Karina Top, who studies infectious diseases and the effectiveness of vaccines, who will review the information.The doctor said it was unlikely, but not impossible, for Ngola to contract the virus on his short trip.
“Overall, it’s a short time and it’s been in touch with a small number of people,” Top said.”Therefore, it would seem that the threat of having been in contact with COVID-19 would be quite low.But it is “not impossible.”
Top said the public will be informed when they come into contact with an inflamed person, but she is alarmed by the invasion of privacy in the case of Ngola.
“It’s also counterproductive to public fitness efforts because it means other people will see what’s happened and are less likely to get tested if they have mild symptoms,” he said.”And if we find that they have a COVID, they’re most likely less frank and fair about where they’ve been and who they’ve been with, for fear of facing the same stigma.
Hannaford’s investigation also indicates that a potential government worker in Campbellton was the leak.
Social media posts reviewed through The Fifth Estate recommend that Ngola be known on Facebook through someone who said her husband was part of the “COVID-19 surveillance team.”The user did not respond to Facebook’s interview requests.
New Brunswick had just recorded two consecutive weeks of coronavirus cases when the Ngola-related outbreak forced the Restigouche region to remain closed while the rest of the province opened restaurants and gyms and expanded social bubbles.
The first sign of the outbreak occurred on May 21.The public fitness government announced that a child in Campbellton had been tested for the virus.
Two more cases followed temporarily. On May 27, New Brunswick’s director of public health, Jennifer Russell, announced that a 90-year-old man and a doctor had also tested positive.
At the time, he also claimed that it was obligatory for fitness professionals to isolate themselves after leaving the province and then lamented that the epidemic was “preventable.”
Ngola, the medical worker, and the man in his 90s, one of his patients who had stopped at his clinic a few days earlier to request renewal of the prescription, Ngola claimed that he had performed the comguyd while physically estranged and that he was wearing a mask.
The boy who took the test also spent a day in the same nursery as Ngola’s daughter, Garderie les Bouts et Choux, and his mother is a nurse who works at Campbellton Regional Hospital.
Caretaker Cecile Castonguay said she blames Ngola for the outbreak.
“I don’t know if the child gave the virus to [Ngola’s] wife or if his daughter gave it to the child.How can I know?” Castonguay said.
CBC News learned and Vitality has shown that the nurse guards the child with a relative living in Quebec on the Restigouche River.
Vitality says 90 employees, or nearly 10% of the hospital staff, live in Pointe-a-la-Croix and cross the bridge to Cambellton daily.More than 20, according to the percentage of patients visiting the Emergency Department at Campbellton Regional Hospital are from Quebec.
Due to staff shortages, hospitals in northern New Brunswick rely heavily on doctors from outside the province.CBC had reported in the past that 22 doctors applying for Health Network energy, adding up to nine in the Cambellton area, had not quite strayed after traveling.the province’s open air.
Although he first warned that another 150 people were at risk of becoming infected, the head of the hospital network admits that he does not know if Ngola was the cause of the spring outbreak.
“At Vitality, we don’t know if he’s patient one, zero, 4 or five.We are not aware of this information,” said Gilles Lanteigne, CEO of Vitality.
Lanteigne said he put himself under political pressure, but acted because the doctor violated the hospital’s COVID-19 protocols.
“I don’t think I owe Dr. Ngola an apology …this resolution made temporarily on the basis that Dr. Ngola had not informed us that he was leaving the province and that after his return, he was not isolated.”
Ngola’s lawyer, Etienne, said his consumer had taken all the mandatory precautions and a scapegoat and had been arbitrarily punished for what was not an unusual practice among the public and medical staff.During the outbreak, at least 10 hospital workers, in addition to at least one other doctor, contracted the virus, but only Ngola’s call was published.
“It’s about the arbitrariness of making regulations when there weren’t, doing them on the fly and deciding that a user is guilty,” Etienne said.
WARNING: The lawyer sees that the duration has an effect on the leakage of data on Ngola’s health:
The newest recent addition to Ngola’s defense team is Christian Michaud, a Moncton-based constitutional expert who claims that the Rights of the Charter in Ngola were violated through the Prime Minister when he was known as a de facto zero patient.
“This is a matter of public interest. This is the Prime Minister who has prejudged the case,” he said.”I am very involved with what I see in terms of violations of the basic principles of the charter’s rights.For example, the presumption of innocence, the right to remain silent, the right to suffer any abuse of power.”
Ngola aims to build a new start at a clinic in Louiseville, Quebec.
He said his suspension and threats prevented him from helping his patients transition to a new doctor and he was expelled from Campbellton before he could sell his house, but he has earned more than two hundred letters and emails from all over Canada.come from foreigners.
Louiseville has a shortage of doctors and has embraced Ngola with open arms, she said, allowing her daughter to see more without crossing provincial borders.
CBC reporter
Judy Trinh is an experienced journalist at CBC. It covers a wide variety of stories, from the latest crime news to the motion #MeToo, demanding legal situations and human rights.Judy pretends to be critical and compassionate in her reporting.Follow her on Twitter @judyatrinh Email: Judy.Trinh@cbc . California
With files through Mia Sheldon, Nicolas Steinbach, Bobbi-Jean MacKinnon
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