Indian trapped in HK ‘flu hotel’

An Indian businessman from New Delhi who was on a trade visit to Hong Kong is now at the epicentre of a bizarre sub-plot to the global panic over the H1N1 flu virus.

Kevin Ireland, 45, is one of over 300 people who are being held in week-long quarantine in a downtown Hong Kong hotel where Asia’s first confirmed flu victim is known to have stayed.

Authorities in Hong Kong sealed off the Metro Park Hotel late on Friday night after a Mexican man who flew in from Tijuana via Hong Kong was diagnosed with the flu virus that has infected more than 800 people in 18 countries around the world.

In a phone interview to DNA from his hotel room on Sunday, Ireland recounted the dramatic circumstances of his being held in quarantine, and how he - and 300 others in the hotel - are coping with the unanticipated restriction on their movements.

“I’d come to Hong Kong for a trade fair, and was scheduled to go out for dinner and a jazz concert on Friday evening with my business associates,” says Ireland. But when they attempted to leave the hotel, police officials barred them, handed them some facial masks, and directed them to return to their rooms and await further instructions. Back in his room, Ireland switched on the TV and learnt - thanks to a live telecast of a press conference by the health secretary - that all 200 hotel guests and 100 staff were to be quarantined for a week because a Mexican resident of the hotel had been diagnosed with the H1N1 flu virus.

Even though the Mexican flu victim had been staying just down the corridor from him, Ireland says he wasn’t so “agitated” by the news as some other guests. “The authorities briefed us on the reasons for our quarantine, saying they didn’t want to take any chances.” For the past two days, all 300 hotel guests have been subjected to frequent temperature checks and health monitoring.

But somewhat inexplicably, the 300 people in quarantine are being permitted to move around freely within the hotel and even interact with one another. “If we’re being quarantined in the truest sense, we should have been kept apart,” points out Ireland. He reckons that the Hong Kong health authorities perhaps initially over-reacted to the Mexican man’s diagnosis, but have decided to go through with it even if it seems excessive.

Life in quarantine may be mind-numbingly boring, but Ireland and his business associates are doing their best to keep their spirits up. “The four of us have been joking and fooling around,” he says. And apart from the fact that his young daughters back home are missing him and urging him to return soon, and the fact that the food that the hotel guest are being served is pretty unappetising, he’s getting by in reasonably good cheer.

“There’s just one thing I don’t understand,” says Ireland. The Mexican man travelled from Mexico, through Shanghai, and entered Hong Kong without his condition being detected. “So, what’s all this song and dance at the airports, with all the fancy thermal scanning equipment, if you can’t catch a guy who has the damned virus, and is walking right through?”