A businessman trapped in a Hong Kong hotel where Asia’s first swine-flu patient was found spoke yesterday of escalating tensions among the guests who have been quarantined there for seven days.
The Hong Kong government took the radical step of sealing off the Metropark Hotel in the city’s Wanchai district on Friday night after confirming that a Mexican man who stayed there had the virus. The decision quarantined 240 guests and more than 100 staff.
Indian national Kevin Ireland, 45, said people had become agitated after first being told by staff that they would be kept in the hotel for only 24 hours and then learning from TV broadcasts that the quarantine period was a full week.
“This morning, there was a Korean gentleman, and he was way off the handle,” Ireland said from inside his hotel room. “He was screaming and shouting and throwing a tantrum. There is a young couple from the UK. She has been crying incessantly.”
“Then there is a South African couple with a 10-month-old baby and their grandmother. The wife was taken away for tests and they are really quite agitated,” he said.
Ireland, who runs a business called Indo-Spanish Marketing Services, said the atmosphere at the hotel changed dramatically in a short time as agitation among the guests rose.
“On Friday night, we were all laughing and joking and trying to make light of it,” he said. “That was when we thought it was only for 24 hours. Now it seems real, and we’ve all got jobs to do, lives to lead and responsibilities.”
The drama began as Ireland and two Spanish colleagues, visiting Hong Kong for a trade fair, tried to leave the hotel for dinner on Friday evening.
“Suddenly, we saw a lot of policemen and other people in protective gear in the lobby, and they said, ‘No, you can’t go out, and we advise you to put on protective face masks,’” he said.
“They weren’t letting people out, and they were keeping out people who wanted to come back in,” he said. “There were mutterings about swine flu. There was no clear information until much later.”
A sign in the lobby said guests would be kept in the hotel for 24 hours, Ireland said, but when he went to his room and switched on the television, he found out otherwise.
Tensions were fueled by the attitude of police in the hotel who were “brusque and standoffish,” he said.
“There are lots of people here from Spain and other countries who just don’t understand them,” he said. “They should be a little bit more gentle. At the end of the day, we just happened to be in the wrong place. They need to be a little bit more patient with people.”
Other concerns were also playing on his mind, he said.
“I haven’t told my daughters because why I don’t want to worry them,” he said of his seven-year-old and 12-year-old girls. “But one of my doctor friends told me to take it easy and not to fret. The problem is this was only supposed to be a short trip, and I didn’t bring books or enough to wear.”
That concern is shared by other guests, who may go to a help desk at the hotel where they can ask for necessities. Most people have been asking for fresh underwear, Ireland said.
“Today our rooms weren’t cleaned,” he said. “There is no room service. There is no change of linen, sheets or towels because they have no access to clean linen from outside.”
Asked what guests thought of the quarantine measure, Ireland said: “People think it is an overreaction. We have access to the Internet and news channels, and everyone is doing their own fact-finding.
“This swine flu is all over the place and it’s only in Mexico where it’s really severe, but nowhere else have they put people into isolation or quarantine like this,” he said.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
The death toll from a shooting in western Afghanistan rose to 11 on Saturday, after gunmen targeted civilians at a picnic spot in Herat, the provincial authority said. Bullet marks were visible on a wall of the Sayed Mohammad Agha Shia shrine, while bloodstains marked a blanket abandoned at the scene. “Eleven people have been recorded dead and eight others wounded from Friday’s incident, with the condition of two of the wounded reported as critical,” Herat’s information office said in a statement. The update raises a toll of seven killed provided on Friday by the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs
RSS