KIWI’S QUARANTINE ROUTINE
Wetzell spending two weeks alone in New Zealand airport hotel
Yanni Wetzell returned to New Zealand last week after spending five years playing college basketball in the United States, most recently as a grad transfer on San Diego State’s 30-2 team that was ranked No. 6 in the final Associated Press poll.
Here’s how his mother described his homecoming meal:
“We are able to drop off some of his favorite takeout food,” Jenny Wetzell wrote in an email. “We leave it at the drop-off desk, and he picks it up and waves at us but can’t get within 10 yards.
“We then drive our car to another (parking lot) about 100 yards away from the hotel. Yanni takes his hotel food to his room and we go onto Facetime to chat, and we eat our takeout (meal) of prawn dumplings and seafood noodle soup in the car and he eats in his hotel room at the same time.
“It’s a such an unbelievable routine. Who would ever have thought welcoming our son home after five years would be reduced to this type of celebratory feasting? Not a wine glass in sight.”
The new normal in New Zealand.
With no pre-draft workouts or NBA Summer League on the horizon, with gyms and fitness centers still shuttered across Southern California, with his lease and student health insurance expiring at the end of May, Wetzell decided to fly 14 hours across the Pacific Ocean to his native New Zealand, where family, a dedicated gym and the national pro league await.
First, though, he must undergo, endure, survive 14 days of mandatory “managed isolation,” which basically means he’s holed up in an airport hotel at the government’s expense to ensure he doesn’t spread COVID-19 in an island nation of 4.8 million that, at last check, is down to — this is not a misprint — one active case. (And that person was released from the hospital last week.)
Fourteen hours, followed by 14 days.
“It’s like being in an ordinary hotel,” the 6-foot-10 forward said. “They’re accommodating, they’re welcoming, the service is great. But you’re stuck here.”
New Zealand took one of the most proactive and extreme approaches to eradicating the virus, imposing travel limits weeks before its first documented case and then shutting the borders in March to all but citizens and returning residents, with 14 days of “managed isolation” for those who show no symptoms and even more restrictive “quarantine” for those who do.
“There will be strict conditions around access to the outdoors and interaction with others,” a government website explains. “This will not change as New Zealand alert levels go up and down.”
New Zealand is currently at Level 2, with society quickly returning to normal. Schools, businesses, libraries, museums and movie theaters are open. The National Basketball League is scheduled to start June 23. Gatherings up to 100 are allowed.
Yet the managed isolation persists even as New Zealand has had no new infections for 11 straight days and 22 total deaths out of 1,504 confirmed or suspected cases. There is talk of creating a tourism “bubble” with Australia, which has equally strict policies for arriving visitors, but little apparent appetite to open the borders beyond that.
You can apply for an exemption, and Wetzell did. Cited his status as a pro basketball player and the psychological toll of not having regular access to fitness facilities. Got denied, like pretty much everyone else.
So his flight from Los Angeles with 60 passengers — “no one within three rows of me,” he said — landed in a deserted Auckland airport last week shortly after 5 a.m.
They had their temperature taken and were interrogated one by one about potential exposure to COVID-19. They collected their luggage, cleared customs and were loaded onto a bus.
“The bus drives you to a hotel, not of your choice,” Wetzell said via phone. “One person off the bus at a time. You get your bags, check in and go to your room, and the next person comes out of the bus. It’s very formal.”
Wetzell figured they were headed to downtown Auckland, about 30 minutes away. It took more like 30 seconds. They exited the terminal … and pulled into the Airport Novotel, a new four-star property that sits adjacent to a massive parking lot.
You get three meals per day that you order online, delivered in a paper bag outside your door. The room, food and Wi-fi are gratis. You can purchase four beers or one bottle of wine per day.
There is a daily checkup with a nurse, and outside exercise is limited to 45-minute supervised blocks in a cordoned-off area of the parking lot. It was more relaxed in April, according to reports from previous Novotel inmates allowed to roam freely until someone tried to escape and they cracked down.
Now airport security shepherds groups of 10 outside in front of the hotel. You have to reserve a spot two days in advance; Wetzell didn’t know and got stuck in his room for a day.
He had his parents deliver some weights along with the prawn dumplings, and he moved some furniture in his room to create a workout station. He does an hour of yoga in the morning, then two weight workouts — one upper body, one lower body — in the afternoon. He watches Netflix and Facetimes friends. He’s learning about the stock market and writing a journal reflecting on his five-year American adventure that started at Division II Saint Mary’s in San Antonio, detoured to Vanderbilt for two seasons and ended at San Diego State as an all-conference player in the Mountain West. The next chapter remains
•