- The most interesting
thing about being here
is just how they're working through
some of these issues that come up
when you house all these people together
and they're kind of cut off
from the rest of the world
in this very, very unique situation.
- So they put up these
temporary gray metal fencing
all around, barricades
all around the outside
of the perimeter of the hotel,
and they have U.S. marshals guarding us
to make sure we don't go stir crazy
and just make a run for it.
(quietly tense electronic music)
The plane and the ride was wild,
because it's not a normal,
commercial passenger jet.
The U.S. State Department
had chartered a cargo plane
and they had retrofitted it with seats,
and then in the back, there
was four porta potties.
Between the seats and the porta potties
was a white plastic table with
two State Department workers
in white hazmat suits who
would check your temperatures
periodically during the flight,
so we got our temperature
checked three times.
- I am at the Miramar
Marine Corps Air Station
where we are going to be held
in quarantine for two weeks.
It is federally mandated.
Basically, we're housed
in these living quarters
that are kind of a cross
between a dorm and a motel room.
We get breakfast, lunch, and dinner
at designated periods throughout the day.
There are people that
come and clean every day,
and I've seen them outside as well
disinfecting the stairwells and the walls.
On the hallways, on the doors,
there are signs saying, you know,
best practices for reducing infection.
- We get treated pretty well here.
This is a multi-agency effort
to make a quarantine like this work.
The CDC is here, of course.
The U.S. Public Health Service,
the National Disaster Medical System,
and the U.S. Marshals are
here, of course, guarding us
and also the Administration
for Children and Families.
They all work to make this
quarantine/summer camp run
on a day to day basis.
- In the mornings, they ask
that we go to the main hall
and get our temperature checked,
which is then recorded
on our log every day.
We have a daily town
hall meeting at two p.m.
Dinner is five to six, and then at night,
they also ask that we test
our temperatures by ourselves
with the thermometers
that we have been given
and then record those and
any potential symptoms also
into our daily log.
- After being in quarantine in China
where we weren't allowed
to leave our rooms,
this has been a nice change,
because not only are we
allowed to leave our rooms,
we get to leave the
hotel and actually walk
on the grounds of the hotel,
which there's a lot of greenery
and grass and palm trees,
so that's really nice
to be able to go outside
and feel the wind and the sun,
and there's a lot of kids
running around playing.
However, we are not allowed to go further
than the hotel grounds.
There's donations of toys for the kids
and they've been holding these
lawn games, they call it,
so soccer and football drills
and also, essentially, boot camp classes.
Folks here are kind of nervous,
because some people from
my evacuation flight
are currently in the hospital being tested
for the coronavirus.
(quietly tense electronic music)
- We got word here that
one of the evacuees
on the first flight into San Diego
had tested positive for coronavirus.
The reaction here was, basically,
a lot of concern, a lot of questions,
particularly because this patient
had tested negative initially,
returned to the compound,
and then tested positive and
was returned to the hospital.
The CDC says that they
isolated the patient
from the time that she returned
so that there was no risk
to any other residents here.
Some of the residents here are now asking
for everyone to be tested
for the coronavirus
and also for people to be
confined to their rooms.
- People here at Travis
were already quite anxious
about socializing with each other.
Most people are keeping to themselves,
but after that news came out,
they are on heightened alert.
I think there's a lot of questions,
whether it's a good idea to keep having
outdoor group activities
like exercise classes
or letting the kids play
soccer or football together.
(pleasant electronic music)
So a quarantine of this scale
in the United States is very unusual.
The CDC folks here told me
that the last time we had
this kind of mass quarantine
of a population was in the 1950s,
and there really hasn't
been anything like this
in the U.S. for decades.
During this outbreak, the U.S. government
has evacuated about 800 American citizens
and their families from Wuhan
and put them under quarantine.
Now that's a reasonably
controlled population,
but in China, we see that they've put
about 60 million people under
lockdown, under quarantine,
and a quarantine of that
size is without precedent.
There's never been a
quarantine that size before,
and it remains to be seen
whether a strategy like that
is successful or not.
(echoing electronic tones)
