Americans work around travel ban, quarantines

The coronavirus' fallout has disrupted the lives of some Americans who travel between the US and China, such as Megan Monroe, currently a teacher in Wuhan who decided to stay in the outbreak's epicenter even though she had a chance to evacuate with other US citizens.

Monroe, who is from California, is an English teacher in the city, which is the provincial capital of Central China's Hubei province. She decided to stay in the city of 11 million despite the US government having sent planes there to repatriate American citizens.

Having been in Wuhan for two months teaching children to perform and speak English in a company called Pro-Stage, Monroe wants to "continue that aspiration as much as I can even with the quarantine going on", she said.

Monroe keeps busy working on her online teaching credential and producing English-instruction clips and an online curriculum for her pupils. Although the country's schools are currently on an extended winter break, China's Ministry of Education has asked schools at all levels to postpone the start of the 2020 spring semester until further notice. Also, after-school training institutions (of which Monroe's is one), also have had to cancel their classroom instruction.

"My mom prefers that I stay in isolation here than get on a plane with a hundred people who might have the virus," said Monroe.

She was also concerned about the quarantine process, which "heightens the chances of getting the virus since you might be in close quarters with someone who's already sick", she said.

For Monroe, concerns over traveling and quarantines are not her only reasons to stay in China.

"I also want to understand the Chinese culture better, and there's no better way to get to know the people and their values than to see how they respond to a crisis like the coronavirus," she said.

Monroe also told China Daily that "the United States is charging its citizens $1,100 to fly out of here".

"I think this is just where I'm supposed to be right now," she said.

For half a month, she has been making short videos for her company's TikTok account, in which she shares her feelings and cheers people on.

"I know that I have my whole life ahead of me, and I'm not going to let this virus get in the way of that," she said.

As for future plans, she mentioned finishing her teaching credential, exploring more of China and staying in Wuhan longer.

"I know I will be in Wuhan for a couple [of] years at least! It's a lovely city; I just need to brush up on my Chinese," she said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), after the first flight carried around 210 US citizens from Hubei to the March Air Reserve Base in California on Jan 29, four more planes have brought hundreds of people to four Air Force bases in California, Texas and Nebraska.

All passengers face a 14-day mandatory quarantine period, during which they are housed at the bases and closely monitored by medical staff.

The US State Department said on its website that the "evacuation flights" are available for private US citizens "on a reimbursable basis".

For US citizens not in Wuhan, some newly enacted travel policies in response to the outbreak also have created some concerns.

According to the Level 4 travel advisory for China that the US State Department issued Feb 3, American citizens who are currently in China should "attempt to depart by commercial means", which have been limited following a travel ban related to the coronavirus.

"I was finally able to get a ticket back to the US after making tens of phone calls nonstop for two days," said a woman who gave only her first name, Lisa, a San Francisco Bay Area resident who flew back to the Northern California city Thursday from the Northeast China city of Changchun, in Jilin province, where she spent the Lunar New Year holiday with her family.

Lisa's original plan was to fly back Feb 10 for work, but her carrier – Air China – notified her that the flight was canceled after the US announced it would deny entry of foreign nationals who were on the Chinese mainland two weeks prior to entering the US.

Three US airlines – Delta, United and American – all have temporarily halted flights between the two countries. Chinese airlines also are significantly reducing the number of flights.

According to Ctrip, China's major flight and hotel booking platform, only about a half-dozen airlines are offering flights from the Chinese mainland to the US in February, with barely any nonstop flights.

Lisa said that her plane was only half full, with all passengers wearing masks. Upon their arrival in the US, they went through temperature checks and were greeted by officials distributing messages in English and Mandarin, asking them to conduct a 14-day monitored self-quarantine.

The number of US airports that receive flights from China has dropped to 11, according to the US Department of Homeland Security. All have implemented enhanced screening procedures and the capacity to quarantine passengers.

"It does not make a lot of sense to restrict travel to and from areas which are not seriously affected, so long as proper health-screening measures are adopted," said Robert Lewis, co-founder of the Beijing-based think tank CGGT and tech startup docQbot.

Lewis, who has worked in China as an international lawyer for almost three decades, has frequently flown back and forth between China and the US. However, he had to put off a trip to China on Jan 31 because of canceled flights.

"Having lived in Beijing at the time of the SARS panic in 2002-2003, I would not personally have concerns about returning to Beijing now under the current conditions," said Lewis, who added that he was "quite shocked" that US airlines canceled all flights between the two countries.

He was, however, concerned about not being able to fly to the US once he returned to China and was even more concerned about the possible mandatory quarantine process.

"Under current policies in the US, I am concerned that I may not even be allowed to self-quarantine at my home in Utah upon my return to the US. It is a big risk — not a big risk of contracting the virus, but of having my personal freedoms curtailed due to what appear to be overly aggressive quarantine measures adopted by the US government," said Lewis, who is currently working remotely in Utah and looking into flying back to Beijing once "conditions are stabilizing".

Mario Cavolo, an American author and speaker based in Shenyang, wrote in a recent LinkedIn post: "The world should be applauding China's unprecedented, broad, aggressive response. I am on the ground here in China watching with my own eyes and it is quite incredible by any measure, not to mention an enormous economic sacrifice."

Cavolo criticized what he called "hateful, vicious attacks on the Chinese government" and restrictive measures taken by other countries, including the US, that are "isolating" China.

Comparing the current coronavirus outbreak with the 2009 H1N1 outbreak — a pandemic that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths globally and more than 12,000 deaths in the US, as the CDC estimated, Cavolo noted that no country issued travel bans to and from the US, and the Americans did not get "xenophobically attacked and targeted by anti-American sentiments like the Chinese are experiencing now".

Foreigners in China are "most likely safer and more peaceful and more stable by simply staying put than by leaving right now", he wrote, adding that in China, "almost everyone is staying home and dutifully isolating themselves with awareness".