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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively