Family’s quarantine horror in Hong Kong
SHEREE BEGA
FOR the first two days they were back home in Hong Kong, Vega Hall-martin Embree, her husband and their 2-yearold son slept.
The family were exhausted after a “traumatic” two-week quarantine under “horrific” conditions at Hong Kong Covid-19 quarantine facility.
“We are adjusting to normal life again,” said Embree, the director of a wildlife conservation NGO, after the family’s release last Wednesday.
“We have a newfound appreciation for the freedom to walk down the street and the comforts of home; not to be constantly stressed about contracting the virus and my son putting his hand in his mouth all the time.”
Embree and her Canadian husband, Colin, were visiting Vega’s family in South Africa when it went into lockdown. They spent seven weeks here before returning to Hong Kong.
“As we disembarked at the airport, we were handed a piece of paper which said we were suspected of having Covid-19 and that we would be sent to a Hong Kong quarantine facility.
“All of us who got off the flight from SA tested negative but despite this, they wouldn’t let us do a home quarantine. We all have homes in Hong Kong, which were perfectly suitable, while everyone from the US and UK, countries with serious Covid-19 problems, were arriving and being able to quarantine at home.”
The South Africans weren’t told where they were going and were bussed to a facility where they were placed inside “what I can only describe as a cell.
“The place is filthy, unhygienic and the bath is soiled. There are no cooking facilities, there is no refrigeration, no way of warming up food and we had to use what looked like children’s cutlery.
“The food was inedible. We went a day without eating, my son included. The bed was a plank on a frame with a bit of foam on top. We couldn’t sleep for the first few days.”
Two days after their arrival, they realised that recovering Covid-19 patients were being moved in.
“They were being moved into the units next to us and among us. In other words, we were then running the risk of being exposed. Those quarantine facilities are built for people who have had known exposure to Covid-19 patients or are recovering and this what was most distressing because we now had been exposed to these people. I cannot explain the stress with that… It’s just a total injustice.”
South Africa, she said, had come out of a seven-week lockdown, “which was harsh, not the kind of farcical lockdown in the UK with people out sunbathing, but one in which you were not allowed to leave the house except to get food.
“(There was) no exercise, no dog walking, no leaving, a compulsory mask policy, closed borders, no domestic flights, roads closed and monitored. How could you not take all of this empirical evidence into consideration when assessing country risk? Certainly their rationale for singling out SA makes no sense. It’s hard to conclude anything else other than ignorance and racism. It’s a terrible injustice that is being done to South Africans. There are many young families, pregnant women, babies there now… They’re very distressed and upset.”
Embree praised the South African government for its “incredible” support. South Africa’s consul general in Hong Kong, Mbulelo Ntshinga, said it had made diplomatic representation to the Hong Kong government.
“This was basically requesting the government to review their decision to classify South Africa as one of the countries that have no transparent measures of how we’re combating the spread of Covid-19,” he said.
“I submitted websites and statistics confirming the SA strategy applied in dealing with this pandemic. We did not receive any response from the government of Hong Kong.”
His request, he said, must be viewed within the context of China-south Africa partnership at the highest level.
“Currently, the Americans and the Europeans are allowed to quarantine at their residences… We fully support all efforts taken by Hong Kong to support the spread of the coronavirus… The final decision and policies aimed at combating Covid-19 are a prerogative of the Hong Kong government.”
In correspondence, health authorities in Hong Kong said it had adopted a risk-based and evidence-based approach after noticing a number of residents, who were earlier stranded in areas with lockdown measures for control of Covid-19, had been returning to Hong Kong lately.
“Some of them depart from South Asia and Africa. It is important to note that the number of confirmed cases reported by these countries, to a certain extent, reflects the national laboratory testing capacity and strategy. Thus the interpretation and any comparison of the number of cases reported per million population should take the factor of surveillance and testing capability into account…
“As the cumulative number of Covid-19 tests performed per million population in these areas was on a relatively low side, the comprehensiveness of their surveillance of Covid-19 is uncertain,” it said.
The issue of testing was spurious, said Embree, whose family has subsequently tested negative.
“It is rather obvious that the HK government is leaning on this to justify their actions because pretty much every other statistic, not to mention the aggressive, robust and much lauded South Africa response to the virus is not mentioned.
“Even the testing does not pass muster as countries such as Japan who have much lower rates of testing and far higher cases are not subject to the government quarantine.”
All of us who got off the flight from SA tested
negative
Vega Hall-martin Embree WILDLIFE CONSERVATION NGO DIRECTOR