QUARANTINE QUARTERS
Passengers from the Wuhan evacuation flight expected to land at CFB Trenton early Friday will spend 14 days quarantined at the Yukon Lodge on the base. A second flight is expected Monday. Five novel coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Canada.
Imagine a rained-out vacation day at a motel somewhere in the country off a highway you can’t quite place.
You’re stuck inside. The kids are bored. You’re running out of things to do. By noon, everyone’s nerves are a little jangled. By dinner, you’re barely keeping the lid on a brewing sibling civil war.
By 10 p.m., you’ve found God again. You’re on your knees. You’re praying for a sunny dawn.
You’d do anything to get out of that room. Now take that experience and multiply it by 14. That should give you some sense of what the 176 passengers evacuated from Wuhan, China, on Thursday have in store for them when they land in Canada early Friday morning.
The first Canadian rescue plane to depart the mass quarantine zone in Wuhan, a sprawling metropolis about 800 km inland from Shanghai, took off, after several delays, Thursday afternoon EST, according to Canadian government officials.
On board were 176 passengers, including as many as 34 minors, who had all been stuck in the locked-down Hubei province, epicentre of the novel coronavirus, for weeks. Two hundred eleven passengers, mostly Canadian citizens, but also 12 permanent residents and six Chinese citizens with Canadian visas, were originally scheduled to depart Thursday. But that number shrank considerably as the day went on.
At a news conference Thursday afternoon, Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne said some passengers might have simply changed their minds. Other may have shown signs of illness and been denied the right to board.
At the same conference, federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu laid out the extensive screening process each passenger had to undergo before being allowed on the plane.
“Chinese health authorities are screening travellers before they get to the airport and anyone who is ill will not be allowed to board the flight,” she said. “DND medical staff will also assess passengers, taking the temperature of each traveller and checking for symptoms of the coronavirus. In addition, DND staff are also assessing the medical status of each traveller to determine if they’re fit to fly.”
Once on board the plane, the passengers, decked out in blue medical masks, were to be assessed again by Canadian military doctors. Each passenger was to be given a health declaration to sign, and Hajdu said anyone showing symptoms of the illness would be quarantined on board.
The flight was set to land in Vancouver early Friday to refuel. After weeks of quarantine in the mega-city turned ghost town that is Wuhan, followed by a travel odyssey that lasted, in some cases, for days, the passengers will be allowed back onto Canadian soil sometime Friday morning at Canadian Forces Base Trenton, a huge Air Force facility about two hours east of Toronto.
176 EVACUEES ON WUHAN FLIGHT TRADING A GHOST TOWN FOR ‘JAIL’ IN CANADIAN HOTEL
There, they’ll undergo another screening in a quarantined hangar before being shown to their rooms in what is, essentially, a well-appointed medical jail.
The 176 evacuees are all being kept in quarantine at the Yukon Lodge, a hotel on the base, for 14 days. “Each traveller will have a room and families will be grouped together,” Hajdu said. “All bedrooms have complete bathrooms with a shower. Emergency management assistance teams from the province of Ontario will provide on-site primary care including social services and each traveller will also receive a daily health assessment.”
A mix of federal and provincial employees as well as officials from the Red Cross will be in charge of feeding and caring for the hotel-bound passengers, Hajdu said. Some of them will be staying in the hotel, which has 290 rooms and has been otherwise completely cleared of guests. They’ll be providing food, clothing, diapers, formula, games and in some cases mental health supports.
“I think it’s important to remember that people have been through a very stressful time under quarantine,” Hajdu said. “I mean, the city (Wuhan) has completely shut down. People have not been able to come and go freely, even from their own homes.”
The Yukon Lodge itself, which is open to military personnel and others with ties to the base, has the look of a higher-end chain motel — better than a Howard Johnson, but maybe not quite a Hilton DoubleTree. Riley McEntee stayed there four years ago. “I don’t know if it’s the same as it was back then, but the accommodations were amazing,” he wrote in an email, “like a four star hotel. Very clean, very orderly, comfortable beds and a good-sized bathroom.”
An additional 50 Canadians are scheduled to join the other 176 in Trenton later this week after they arrive in Canada on an American evacuation flight. Another all-Canadian rescue wagon is set to leave Wuhan next Monday. Hajdu said it’s too early to say where those evacuees will be housed.
At the Yukon Lodge, meals will be delivered. Support staff will pop by. When asked if the evacuees would be allowed to leave their rooms, Hajdu replied: “the purpose of isolation is to prevent interaction.” So, we’ll take that as a no. “This is part of the stress of being in a quarantined situation,” Hajdu added. “Individuals will have to find ways to occupy themselves.”
If all goes well over the next two weeks, the Trenton crew will be allowed to go home one week too late for the Family Day long weekend. That might be for the best. A hotel suite is only so big.
After 14 days, more time with the family may be the last thing any of them need.