Since my guess is a few of you are wondering if the flu virus has impacted my travels, here’s a quick update (since I rather expect my link to the blog will be blocked after this post, now that I’ve accessed it):
As of my departure from Hong Kong yesterday morning, there was one reported case of H1N1 in the city-—a traveler from Mexico checked into a local hospital with the bug, making him China’s first confirmed case. His stay at the Metropark Hotel in Wanchai resulted in quarantine of dozens of people, from hotel staff to fellow passengers who sat near him on the plane. As a result, the lot of them is being held for 7-10 days, and the Hong Kong Government has raised the Influenza Pandemic Alert Level to the highest level-—Emergency.
When I boarded the plane, it was life as usual. But arrival in Beijing…well, that was another story.
While in the air, we were asked to complete a “Health Declaration Form” that began with “Notice: For your and others’ health, please fill in the form truly and completely. False information of intent will be followed with legal consequences.”
- Name, date of birth, sex, nationality, passport number
- Contact address and phone
- Description of where you’d been the past two weeks
- Have you had close contact with patients or suspects suffering from influenza within the past week?
- Have you had close contact with a pig within the last week?
- Please mark the symptoms and diseases you have with a checkmark (list includes fever, headache, cough, diarrhoea, sore throat, vomiting, muscle ache, breathing difficulty)
Followed by:
“I declare all the information given in this form are true and correct,” which you sign and date, leaving a spot for a quarantine official to jot down your temperature.
Rather than pull planes up to the boarding gates, they’re held out on the tarmac until health crews donning full hazmat suits (hood, goggles, masks, etc.) can board the plane. On ours, they came with a seating chart in hand, several of them making a bee line for passengers in approximately row 20 or so, where they remained for the next half hour. Several stacks of masks were shuttled back to those rows of the plane while the rest of us were instructed to remain in our seats.
About 45 minutes after being boarded, they allowed those of us ahead of row 20 to disembark one at a time, giving our health forms to a hazmat suited attendant at the door. As we stepped onto the top landing of the exterior steps,our temperature was taken (ear thermometer) and what appeared to be a retinal scan was done. With a nod of approval, we could then go down the steps, board a shuttle bus, and be taken to the terminal, where we climbed the exterior steps of a jetway, then entered the airport gate area.
Again, we were instructed to complete the health form, this time for agents inside the airport. We walked through a thermal imaging area that scanned each passenger for elevated body temperature, then came through yet another health check where the second form was turned in. If there was any question about how seriously China is taking this flu thing, well…that’s pretty much gone by the time you hit immigration.
Personally, I find a certain degree of comfort in knowing how hard core they are about keeping this flu contained, but have to admit, that opinion might be different, had I been seated within three rows of the Mexican gentleman who flew to Hong Kong. Being rushed into a week or more of quarantine because you drew 17B on the airline website would be tough to swallow. Still…these guys came through SARS and the bird flu, both of which did a serious number on their economy. Can’t say I blame them for being so vigilant.
Pretty sure this will be my sole blog post from here, since once the door has been cracked open, it’s typically slammed shut the remainder of the stay. I’ll try to get back online this coming week if possible, but don’t hold out a lot of hope. Already, I can see my business related email accounts have all been blocked.
Off to discover the treasures of Beijing!
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