How to survive world’s longest coronavirus hotel quarantine: 3 Hongkongers tell how they endured 21 long days in isolation
- Business executive Arnaud de Surville woke up crying in his last week of quarantine, while Brenda Adrian mourned the death of her mother during her confinement
- Zoe Fortune and her husband struggled to keep their energy and positivity going as they quarantined with their two children, aged four and six
In the last week of his three-week hotel quarantine, Arnaud de Surville woke up crying. A successful business executive, he’d never had a mental health issue and hadn’t expected the 21-day isolation to be so gruelling.
“The last week was horrible, I woke up twice in the morning in tears,” says de Surville.
He is not alone. Quarantine has been associated with increased rates of suicide, anger, acute stress disorder, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, with symptoms continuing even years after the quarantine ends.
When Hong Kong increased its mandatory quarantine period to three weeks in December, it picked up the title for the world’s longest hotel quarantine. The painful cost of 21 days in a hotel and the excruciating red tape have been widely discussed, less so the toll on our mental health.
No matter how well prepared you are, those in quarantine widely speak of the challenges of entering the third week of solitary confinement in a small room, often without access to fresh air.
“My expectation was that when I entered the final stretch I’d be fuelled by new energy, which didn’t happen. Maybe that’s why I was broken,” says de Surville, who was returning from a business trip.