scorecard
  1. Home
  2. life
  3. news
  4. An influencer who traveled to Rwanda to work with gorillas says she was locked up for 4 days after a false-positive COVID test

An influencer who traveled to Rwanda to work with gorillas says she was locked up for 4 days after a false-positive COVID test

Lindsay Dodgson   

An influencer who traveled to Rwanda to work with gorillas says she was locked up for 4 days after a false-positive COVID test
  • The influencer Charly Jordan posted a tearful TikTok on Sunday in which she said she'd tested positive for COVID-19 when she arrived in Rwanda.
  • The travel influencer said that people in hazmat suits had "dragged" her away from her friends when the test came back after a few days and that she was put in isolation in a hotel room.
  • "I'm not with anyone I know, and I'm in f---ing Rwanda, Africa, and I don't know how long I'm going to be here, and they won’t tell me anything," she said.
  • The test turned out to be a false positive, and Jordan was allowed out of isolation after four days.

The influencer Charly Jordan said she was taken away from her friends in Rwanda in recent days because a test for the novel coronavirus came back positive.

Jordan, who said she traveled to Rwanda to work with gorillas through an animal-conservation group, said that she had tested negative for COVID-19 when she left the US and that she and her friends had all been wearing masks in public and following other safety measures since landing.

She had no symptoms and had already contracted the virus three months ago, she said, and was therefore confused as well as concerned about what was going on.

"I got 100,000 tests afterwards to make sure I was negative," she said in a TikTok over the weekend. "I flew to Rwanda, Africa, five days ago, and just got here, and tested positive."

The TikTok has now been set to private, but it was reshared on Twitter by the satirical YouTube show "Def Noodles."

"Literally the f---ing government showed up at my place and dragged me away from everybody I was with," Jordan said in the TikTok, writing that she was taken away by people in hazmat suits. "I don't speak the language, they locked me in this f---ing room, and I can't leave."

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people from the US avoid nonessential travel to most countries, including Rwanda, because of the novel coronavirus.

"It's really scary. I don't know why I have it again," Jordan said. "I'm not with anyone I know, and I'm in f---ing Rwanda, Africa, and I don't know how long I'm going to be here, and they won't tell me anything."

In a follow-up TikTok that has also been removed, Jordan said she had smoked marijuana every day for the past 3 1/2 years and was going "cold turkey" in the hotel room.

"Not only am I completely alone, locked in this room, but I'm having withdrawals and crazy nightmares and not sleeping," she said. "And all the food here is making me sick. So we are just all around not in a good place right now. I've literally just cried for three hours."

Jordan was allowed to leave isolation after four days when two more tests came back negative — it turned out the first one had been a false positive.

She said she wanted to "clear up some confusion" in an update posted to TikTok on Monday.

"Whether you think I should or should not have been traveling is your own opinion," she said. "But I want you to know I did everything by the books in accordance to the Rwandan and US government to make this a safe trip."

"People are allowed to make their own opinions, but I just wanted to give you guys the facts of what actually happened," she said.

Insider has reached out to representatives for Jordan for comment.

READ MORE ARTICLES ON



Popular Right Now



Advertisement