Coronavirus: Japan airport builds cardboard ‘hotel’ for stranded travellers

Narita Airport, near Tokyo, set up the facility in its baggage-claim area for passengers awaiting the results of virus tests

Results can come as quickly as six hours, but delays now mean many take as long as one or two days, a health official said

Reading Time:1 minute

Cardboard beds at Narita airport near Tokyo set up for people who have to wait for the results of government coronavirus quarantine checks. Photo: AP

Published: 2:26pm, 13 Apr 2020Updated: 11:16pm, 13 Apr 2020

Japan’s Narita Airport has prepared an impromptu hotel of cardboard beds and quilts in its baggage-claim area for passengers from overseas who might have to stay there while awaiting the results of tests for the novel coronavirus.

Though flights at the airport, about 60 kilometres east of central Tokyo, are down so sharply that it has closed one of its runways, planes are still landing with passengers arriving from countries including the United States and Italy who are required to undergo tests for the virus before they can head home.

A quarantine official collects a sample for coronavirus testing from an arriving passenger at Narita airport earlier this month. Photo: Kyodo

Results can come as quickly as six hours, but delays now mean many take as long as one or two days, an official at the Health Ministry said, declining to give his name.

With passengers forbidden to take public transport, those with nobody to pick them up have to wait – and the cardboard beds have been readied in case nearby facilities currently being used to house passengers are full, he added.

An aerial view of Narita airport near Tokyo on Friday. Photo: Kyodo

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x