Russians held in quarantine enjoy Netflix and Instagram

CAUGHT in the middle of the deadly outbreak of coronavirus, 144 Russians who have flown out from Wuhan are using Instagram to document their way through a forced quarantine in a Siberian sanatorium patrolled by riot police.

The Russians, most of them believed to be in their 20s and 30s, took the Russian government up on their offer to leave Wuhan, and were flown to a facility in Siberia late on Wednesday.

Russian health officials say none of them appears to have contracted coronavirus, but they nevertheless have to stay locked up for 14 days in case they display any symptoms.

After a gruelling journey on military planes with no bathroom, the Russians had to give away all their belongings for disinfection, leaving them with nothing but identical green-and-white striped pyjamas.

Some have double-downed on exercise routines, some are binge-watching Netflix shows and others are taking photos of the Siberian landscape which, for the time being, is out of their reach.

“Good morning, here’s your morning walk from this window,” one of the evacuees, Alyona Sulayeva, said in an Instagram video, as she filmed the sun rising over a Siberian forest seen from her window.

Another person in quarantine is Nadezhda, a model from the south of Russia. She posed for pictures on her balcony, offering fellow evacuees tips on how to style the striped pyjamas in a more alluring fashion.

The evacuees, who filled up what used to be a TB sanatorium, were asked

‘My health is fine, thanks to exercising! I am the most positive hostage of coronavirus’

to share rooms with a flatmate or two. “I don’t see the point of quarantine if they put two or three people together – in Europe people stay in single rooms,” Ms Sulayeva said.

Some of the evacuees were more upbeat. “My health is fine, thanks to exercising!” said Pavel Lichman.

The evacuee described himself as “the most positive hostage of coronavirus” in a comment on an Instagram video showing an intensive exercise routine.