Love, lust and time to party as hotel 'captives' scent freedom
Dozens of people partied in the lobby of the quarantined Metropark Hotel in Wan Chai last night to celebrate their impending release today, as guests told tales of love, lust and laughter from the week-long internment.
Sheets that had covered the windows of the locked-down hotel for days were ripped down amid the festivities, revealing smiling guests raising glasses of wine, beer and other liquor and kissing one another.
Earlier, the first people sequestered in the swine flu scare that broke out last week were freed from other quarantine centres. Of the 35, some went straight to the airport, while others went shopping. But the man who sparked the lockdown, a Mexican tourist who stayed at the hotel and became Hong Kong's first confirmed case on Friday last week, remains in stable condition in Princess Marget Hospital.
On the mainland, the seven-day quarantine on passengers who were on the same AeroMexico flight as the Mexican man, who flew to Shanghai before boarding another plane to Hong Kong, also ended, with all but one of 128 people released.
At the Metropark, the sheets were later put back over the windows, but that did not stop people inside from lifting the veil on what had gone on among the 283 people, most of them strangers, who were thrown together for a week.
The time they had wasn't all bad, according to one source, speaking by telephone, who said at least two new couples had formed.
Another story going around is that at least one of the women caught behind closed doors is a prostitute.
She remained stuck in one of the hotel's 173 rooms with the guest who brought her in because the management refused her a separate room, guests said.
'I think it's true,' said one guest. 'I think I met the guy, and I talked with him.'
Earlier, officials had declared the health of 35 tourists and local residents quarantined elsewhere to be '100 per cent satisfactory', freeing 29 people from the Lady MacLehose Holiday Village in Sai Kung, three from the Lei Yue Mun Park and Holiday Village and three from Princess Margaret Hospital. The 35 comprise travellers who arrived in Hong Kong on the same flight as the 25-year-old Mexican man who has the virus, and the two taxi drivers who came into contact with him.
One of the drivers, Mr Tam - who drove the sick tourist from the Metropark to Ruttonjee Hospital - said: 'It was boring. You could wander around to kill time, but after all you were still locked in the camp.' He had no quarrel with the quarantine, though. 'The disease is contagious. I am relieved I am fine.'
A score of released tourists checked into the Royal Plaza Hotel in Mongkok for a two-night free stay offered by the government as compensation for their loss of freedom, while 14 went straight to the airport.
A Shanghai tourist described the release as like 'returning to reality'.
'I am so excited to be able to get out,' she said. 'You know what, I have not done any shopping at all.'
At the airport, mainland secondary student Zhang Ruirao complained that the situation in the quarantine camp was chaotic. At first, there was no television and no telephone, she said.
On the mainland, the Ministry of Health website said the person still in quarantine had shown symptoms of fever, redness in the eyes and a sore throat on Wednesday, but did not give any details of the person's gender, age, nationality or whereabouts.
The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in that city had sent a biological sample to the provincial-level CDC for testing, but no result had been determined, the statement said.
AeroMexico Flight 98 landed at Pudong airport in Shanghai on Thursday last week with 176 passengers on board. Health authorities tracked them down and put them under quarantine and medical observation in 18 provinces and cities. Thirty-eight of them, all Mexican nationals, were taken back to their home country on Monday.
