When the COVID-19 pandemic began to sweep the world in February 2020, Linda Guamán, a microbiologist at the UTE University of Quito, was ready to serve her country. Ecuador announced its first case on February 29 and the disease spread rapidly. Guayaquil, the country’s largest city, was especially hard hit. Hospitals, funeral homes and mortuaries were overwhelmed and bodies were reportedly abandoned in the streets. Guamán, whose research focused on synthetic biology and metabolic engineering, knew the country would not have enough testing capacity and wanted to help.

“It was clear to me that I had to use all the knowledge I had acquired. I joke about this, but I was a little happy in the sense that this is what I had been reading my entire career. This is what I had trained for,” he says.

However, within a few months, that excitement turned to anguish when she became embroiled in a political controversy over the purchase of COVID-19 tests. In an ordeal that lasted several years, she would be arrested, face trial with the possibility of a prison sentence of up to 13 years, and be forced to wear an ankle tag to control her movements.

Guamán recounts how she received a call in April 2020 from Ximena Abarca, a public health scientist and former vice minister of health, inviting her to work on Quito’s COVID-19 testing strategy. The city had purchased about 100,000 rapid point-of-care tests from an overseas company, and even before Guamán accepted Abarca’s offer, there were stories in the press about the tests being overpriced. “My mom said, ‘You’ll get in trouble if you take this job.’ But it seemed pretty clear to me. I didn’t participate in buying the tests, I’m just going to work as hard as I can,” Guamán recalls.

In January 2021, the police contacted her. And in March, she was accused of embezzlement of public funds, along with Abarca, Jorge Yunda (a doctor and then mayor of Quito) and 11 other people, mainly scientists and health workers. At first Guamán did not realize the seriousness of the situation.

“I thought: This is absurd. It makes no sense and it will all be over very soon,” he says.

The investigation focused on why the Municipality of Quito chose to use loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) tests instead of the more widespread polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests. LAMP tests are similar to PCR tests, but are faster and easier to use because they do not require repeated heating and cooling cycles. Michael Mina, an epidemiologist and immunologist who was working at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, at the time and gave evidence via video link at the trial, says Nature he felt it was his duty as a scientist to explain how the virus tests worked.

“At the time, there was tremendous confusion about the science of testing,” he says. “Linda wasn’t confused,” he adds. He called LAMP “a very powerful and affordable approach to COVID-19 testing” that his country could use at a time when PCR reagents were in short supply worldwide. “LAMP was an alternative to PCR that was exceptionally high quality and available,” says Mina.

Testing alternatives

Mina, who helped run the US government’s Home Test to Treat program, points to a mistaken view at the time that PCR was the only test that could be trusted. He says LAMP, and then antigen tests, each had their own applications in different circumstances. “In some ways, PCR turned out to be one of the most limited technologies for the needs of the pandemic,” he adds. “It was too sensitive to be used reliably as an indicator of whether someone was infectious and required isolation. It was also a technical challenge for many laboratories, and reagents were expensive and in short supply. LAMP was a great alternative.”

Guamán maintains that prosecutors built a case against her and her co-defendants using a report she had commissioned and which was released as a document.¹ in January 2021. It showed that the LAMP tests had a sensitivity of 61.9% and prosecutors reasoned that they were therefore deficient (a point ultimately rejected by the court, he says).

Prosecutors alleged that Guamán and his fellow defendants had misappropriated public funds. Ecuador has long been characterized by political instability, in which Guamán was suddenly caught up. Yunda described the accusations at the time as “political persecution.”

The first trial, which took place in September 2021, was halted after defense lawyers argued that one of the judges was biased.

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During this pause, restrictions were placed on the defendants’ movements: they had to report to a police station twice a week, they could not buy or sell any property, and they had to wear an ankle tag.

For Guamán, this was one of the most humiliating aspects of the ordeal. She says the police would contact her through the tag and if they called she would have to raise her ankle to talk. It had to be charged frequently and she would have to sit while it was plugged into the wall. She became pregnant during this period and had to apply to court to have the tag removed while she gave birth in 2023. A few days after her son was born, the police came to put it back on her.

The University of Guamán organized a public statement in its defense and that of Abarca, which was signed by 60 academics from all over Ecuador. In it they expressed “solidarity and support” for Guamán as a scientific colleague and said they were concerned about an “attempt to implicate her” in a “possible act of embezzlement of funds.” They added: “We emphatically reject this, given his impeccable track record, which has earned him recognition inside and outside the country.”

In November 2021, the Committee of Concerned Scientists, an international nonprofit organization based in New York City, wrote to Ecuador’s president, Guillermo Lasso. The letter acknowledged that questions had been raised about the LAMP tests, but expressed concern “that the scientific research has been used to settle political scores with the previous Quito administration that authorized the tests.” The political climate in Ecuador is feverish.

The letter said about Guamán’s terrible experience: “Such militarization of science has no place in health services.”

Public recognition

In 2023, Guamán was shortlisted for the John Maddox Prize, an award for people who champion science and evidence, but was unable to travel to London for the awards ceremony. The citation praised “her bravery in enduring political intimidation for her conduct as a scientist in public office” and said she had been “caught in a backlash against the city’s mayor.” During her ordeal, Guamán says, some colleagues ostracized her and stopped being invited to conferences. Others supported her privately but were too afraid to speak publicly.

While waiting for the trial to resume, she continued working and was appointed director of the Biomedical Research Center (CENBIO) of the UTE. His work now focuses on biodiscovery, searching both in the laboratory and in the jungles of Ecuador for molecules that have anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory or antimicrobial properties. He initially turned down the job offer because he wanted to focus on the upcoming court case, but his boss said it would give him something else to think about. The salary increase was also helpful: Guamán was paying legal fees and had hired a public relations firm to address intense media interest in the case.

The trial resumed in February 2025 and lasted 30 days. Guamán, who had been studying law in preparation, says he approached the court case as if he were teaching the “most important class of his life.”

“I had a ton of resources from my lab. I had whiteboard pens, ping-pong balls to show what viral load is. I had a teddy bear and I took the stuffing out of it to show what DNA is. I took a PCR test and I showed the jury how the PCR test worked.” He says that while he was describing the differences between the evidence, at one point the judge asked him if he had explained all this to the prosecutors. When she said yes, “he said, ‘Why are you here?’”

My career changed from psychologist to open science advocate