Quarantine Story

This story popped up on several German and Italian news sites this afternoon, and it's still in a flexible situation.

As you might know....there's been some Coronavirus (COVO-19) outbreak in northern Italy, around the Veneto and Lombardy area.

As some of you might know....there's this wonderful tropical island out off the coast of Africa, in the Pacific Ocean....called Mauritius.  For reference, flying out of Rome, it's a 15-hour flight, with a minimum of one stop.

A lot of Germans and Italians fly down to Mauritius, typically for a week or two of sun and beach-fun.

Well....the plane from Rome (Alitalia) pulled in this morning, and they held everyone onboard the plane.

Then some type of review occurred.....mostly with passport control.

Then at the end of this.....the officials from Mauritius said one of two things would occur with Italians from the Veneto or Lombardy area: (1) you'd come off and agree to a period of quarantine.  No one has said if this was seven or fourteen days, or if you could do this quarantine at your four-star hotel.  The second option (2): you'd stay on the Alitalia plane and return to Italy.

Folks affected?  About forty. 

You can imagine this scene.  Little is said by the reporters or officials.  My humble guess is that no one from the group will volunteer for quarantine unless they were guaranteed the hotel for the whole fourteen days (as they had paid already for the trip).

But this ought bring you to some pondering points. If you were among the forty and had the virus.....it might be two weeks before it displayed itself.  But you could have easily passed it on the 15-hour flight....to the other 160-odd people on the plane.  So they'd have it or the symptoms in a week or so.

Adding to this.....do you really want to sit on this plane for the next two hours....to return to Italy, and spend 15 hours in return status? 

The hotel reservation that you shoved 3,000 Euro down upon?  Wasted or gone.

Just how peeved would you be?  And massive destruction to the resort Mauritius situation?  I could see thousands of Italians calling up and asking stupid questions now, then cancelling their trips.

Something about to flatten the entire travel market in the next three months?  It would not surprise me if suddenly you have twenty countries with full-up denial of flights for an entire month.