LAST GROUP IN QUARANTINE AT MCAS MIRAMAR RELEASED
63 China evacuees showed no signs of coronavirus after 14 days in seclusion; two still held
A fortnight of seclusion is finished for 230 of the 232 China evacuees who temporarily called San Diego home while under federal quarantine.
The final group, which arrived at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar on Feb. 7, climbed aboard buses Thursday morning after a final round of health checks found no indication they have been infected by the novel strain of coronavirus.
According to a brief statement from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 63 evacuees left the base, leaving only two behind. One remains at a UC San Diego Health hospital in an isolation room after testing positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, last week. A second person had their quarantine period extended through the weekend due to contact with one of the two people from the quarantine group who tested positive.
Many who waited out their quarwith antines at Miramar are from other places, and buses delivered freshlyreleased travelers to San Diego International Airport Thursday morning just as they did on Tuesday with a first group of 166 people who made up the first group to finish their two-week time out on base.
Though the exact quarantine period for the virus is not yet known, 14 days is the longest any other form of coronavirus has stayed in the body before causing symptoms, so the CDC has set that span of time as the threshold for declaring people exposure risk disease-free.
Now that these folks have done their time under extreme daily scrutiny from public health workers, the federal agency is urging the public to accept them back into the fold.
“It is important to know that these people being released from quarantine pose no health risk to the surrounding community, or to the communities they will be returning to,” said Benjamin Haynes, the CDC deputy branch chief, in a statement.
While those released from quarantine have been declared free of the virus by health officials, other people in the region continue to be monitored. Dr. Wilma Wooten, the county’s public health officer, said on Wednesday that 249 low- and medium-risk travelers who have returned to San Diego County after being in China have now served 14-day home quarantines. As of Wednesday, 81 from that group had already completed their isolation periods without getting sick. The county provided no fresh numbers on the number of those under home quarantine or on the number who had completed quarantine Thursday.
On Wednesday, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a local emergency declaration regarding the coronavirus as the number of people under self-supervised home quarantine across the region continued to grow. Dr. Erin Staples, the CDC field lead for MCAS Miramar, said the agency is relying on local health care providers and is confident in the care being provided to the remaining hospitalized patient who UC San Diego last listed in “fair” condition earlier this week.
“Two passengers’ journeys have been delayed, but we are confident in the care they are receiving from local health officials and health care providers,” Staples said. “We appreciate the dedication and cooperation that MCAS Miramar, San Diego County, UC San Diego, Rady Children’s Hospital and Scripps Mercy Hospital have provided in recent weeks to ensure these evacuees have been appropriately cared for, while also protecting the health of their local community.”
Most of those who arrived Thursday morning by bus at San Diego International Airport declined to say anything about their experiences in quarantine, quietly picking up their luggage and making their way into security lines after checking in for their flights.
A few, like Fan Ti, and his wife, Tong Zheng, made it clear that they found their accommodations on base more than satisfactory.
“It was great ... very happy,” Ti said.
Though they have been declared disease-free by the CDC, Ti, who said he was headed for San Francisco, still has a special emergency line to the CDC and will use it if necessary.
“If we have symptoms of coronavirus infection, we will call,” Ti said.
Meanwhile, over the next few weeks, the two base facilities that housed the evacuees will be cleaned.
“Over the next week, the (Consolidated Bachelor Quarters) and Miramar Inn will be disinfected by Health and Human Services contracted cleaning professionals,” Capt. Matthew Gregory, MCAS Miramar spokesman, said Thursday. “Once cleaned and inspected, they will be turned back over to MCAS Miramar for normal operations.”
Base activities should be back to normal by Feb. 28, he said.