ZCZC
BFF-09
HEALTH-TOURISM-VIRUS
Fever and fear on board repatriation flight to Warsaw
WARSAW, March 18, 2020 (BSS/AFP)- Thirty-eight and a half degrees. The thermometer’s verdict is final when a Polish border guard points it at the forehead of a 50-something woman sitting in seat 3F on a charter flight that landed in Warsaw late on Tuesday from Malaga, Spain.
“Take the lady’s temperature again,” says the guard’s partner dressed in green fatigues and wearing a face mask.
The thermometer still shows 38.5 degrees Celsius (101.3 Fahrenheit), even on a third measurement.
Passengers sitting beside the woman, whose name is Joanna, go pale.
“I should have kept my mask on for the whole flight,” remarks a young woman seated in 3D.
“But we’re suffocating here, it was impossible to keep it on for hours — it was very hot on the plane,” she adds.
The anxiety among passengers, all Poles returning from holidays in Spain or Morocco, is palpable.
No one escapes the compulsory health check after landing on Polish soil.
Aside from masks, passengers also wear gloves, either the medical latex variety or for skiing, as roughly half of the people on board are returning from a trip to Spain’s Sierra Nevada ski region.
Others constantly rub their hands with disinfectant gel, while some simply focus on staying calm.
On arrival in Warsaw, everyone is registered and required to self-quarantine for 14 days.
Poland has closed its borders to foreigners to thwart the spread of the virus in the EU country of 38 million people where it has already claimed five lives among the 221 confirmed cases of infection.
At midnight on Saturday, Poland suspended all scheduled international flights.
Since then, only flights chartered by the government to repatriate Poles scattered in various countries are allowed.
– Empty skies –
Between flights, planes are thoroughly cleaned with products containing alcohol and then disinfected with a special gas, flight attendants tell passengers as they explain the late departure.
The flight from Malaga was delayed for two hours and took off from an eerily empty airport.
Several European countries have suspended international flights, forcing major world airlines to axe almost all flights temporarily.
“We almost got stuck in Morocco,” says Tadeusz Gorny, 60, who just had time to visit Casablanca, Rabat and Fez before the North African country also said it would be suspending all international flights until further notice.
His tour group returned in the nick of time via the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in northern Morocco.
“In Fez, the tour operator put us in a bus to send us to the port of Ceuta. The Moroccans did not want to let us pass. Miracle or big baksheesh (bribe), in the end we were able to enter Ceuta and board the ferry” to Spain.
“Many British, Canadian and Colombian people were turned back and stayed in Morocco,” added Gorny.
His tour guide Teresa Pomianowska explains that her group was very lucky. Several other groups of Poles were left stuck in Morocco, she said.
“Mrs. Joanna, please come with us for a more detailed medical examination,” one of the border guards asked the passenger showing the fever.
The remaining passengers were able to disembark and go to passport control.
“When a passenger has a temperature above 37.5 degrees Celsius, we start to worry,” the guard explained. “Below 37.5 degrees, we let them go.”
BSS/AFP/AU/08:45 hrs