Life under microscope

Cocooned in tiny rooms for a week, 300 tourists and staff quarantined at a Hong Kong hotel in the battle against swine flu have been painfully adjusting to life in confinement, while aching for release later this week. --ST PHOTO: PEH SHING HUEI

HONG KONG - COCOONED in tiny rooms for a week, 300 tourists and staff quarantined at a Hong Kong hotel in the battle against swine flu have been painfully adjusting to life in confinement, while aching for release later this week.

Hong Kong's downtown Metropark Hotel in the famed Wanchai bar district was placed under quarantine for seven days last Friday after a Mexican man staying there was confirmed as the city's first H1N1 swine flu case as the disease spread to Asia.

Hong Kong's leader Donald Tsang on Tuesday publicly apologised to the hotel guests for the inconvenience faced, but local health officials and experts have defended the measure as necessary to contain the risk of a community-wide spread.

With the hotel sealed off by masked police and buzzing with health officers in surgical suits, guests have kept largely to themselves in hotel rooms, undergoing health checks, taking anti-flu drugs like Tamiflu and venturing out only for meals.

'You're confined to a room. All you can do is walk to the lobby. You've got to do your own washing and there's just a TV, a computer and an iPod,' Leslie Carr, a British guest, told Reuters by telephone.

'My trusted computer keeps me sane,' added Mr Carr who has documented the surreal hotel existence on YouTube and online blogs, recounting occasional temper tantrums thrown by guests, frustration at disrupted travel plans and more prosaic gripes like the poor quality of the food provided.

Despite this, initial fears and anger seem to have abated with no new H1N1 cases discovered in the hotel. Many guests are now counting down the days till Friday evening when they're due to be released.

'We try every way to make their (life) as tolerable as possible. Nobody wants to be quarantined but unfortunately they happened to be in the hotel at that time,' Hong Kong Health Secretary York Chow told reporters. -- REUTERS