The week of Lucía de Armas, a photography student, was already bad. She had been infected with coronavirus for the second time and was due to spend her 21st birthday in isolation. But it all got worse when he suffered an accident in one eye. Her mother, Mariana Volpi, who shared the story on Twitter, took her to an eye clinic for a check-in. But there he lived a situation that, surely, he had not imagined. It is that in the private clinic of the Buenos Aires town of Bella Vista they refused to attend to the young woman because she had Covid-19. In fact, the receptionist asked the woman to leave because it was close contact, even though she, she says, had two negative PCRs.” The people who were waiting to be taken care of started saying to me, ‘Leave!’ In particular a lady with the mask without covering her nose. He tells me to think about them and let’s leave. Of course I told her to put on her mask well first and ask her if she was positive for Covid. The surprised lady says to me, ‘No!’ ‘And how do you know lady that it is not positive?’ My daughter is that’s why she didn’t come in. He had an accident,” he says.
Shock. The reception piba stops nervously and leaves. He comes back and says: we can’t take care of you and you have to leave because it’s close contact.
The people who were waiting to be taken care of started telling me: go! in particular a mrs. with the mask without covering her nose, — Mariana Volpi (@MarVolpioficial)
December 29, 2021
In the health center they were inflexible. The receptionist again asked him to leave and even recommended calling the SAME. “I didn’t believe what he was telling me and kindly asked him to repeat me, to see if he hadn’t understood well. He repeated the same thing: ‘Go home and call an ambulance.'” Dominated by indignation, and with a different tone of voice, she warned: “If they refuse to attend to my daughter, right now I am calling a notary to come and draw up a record where it is recorded that they did not want to attend to her.” By then, the young woman was crying on the sidewalk and asking her to leave. “Distressed, embarrassed. The leper. A very ugly feeling. Painful. (plus the embarrassment of the crazy mother screaming at the front desk: me!)” she says.
My tone of voice was no longer the same and indignation took hold of me. In a high tone of voice I said to the receptionist: If you refuse to attend to my daughter right now I am calling a notary to come and draw up a record where it is recorded that they did not want to attend to her. — Mariana Volpi (@MarVolpioficial)
December 29, 2021
Mariana was not willing to leave the place without having her daughter taken care of. A lawyer, she spoke about the right to health and pointed out the “obligation” of the clinic to have a protocol -after two years- to attend to positive patients of Covid-19. Outside, Lucia “gave no more.” She came out to restrain her, when a receptionist approached them and told them that a doctor was preparing to care for the young woman. The story ended well. “The doctor was very loving and kind to her,” she says. The diagnosis: fissured cornea, in addition to the positive Covid-19 that keeps her isolated. The sense of indignation and injustice became a sense of victory, of “victory in the face of dehumanity.”
We left the clinic with a sense of victory in the face of dehumanity. My daughter was crying heartbroken. Today is his birthday. Turns 21. He has covid and I couldn’t give him a hug. — Mariana Volpi (@MarVolpioficial)
December 29, 2021
Back at home, they celebrated their birthdays, at a distance, with the protocols imposed by the pandemic.
