By Kanina Foss and sapa
The Joburg couple who have been placed under an eight-day quarantine for swine flu in a Hong Kong hotel are doing fine, but are desperate to return home.
Faghmi and Mari Abrahams are among the 300 guests and staff of the four-star Metropark Hotel in Wanchai who were isolated after a 25-year-old Mexican who had stayed at the hotel was diagnosed with swine flu. He has since made a full recovery.
The couple were supposed to return home from their holiday on Saturday, but when they arrived back at the hotel on Friday, after a visit to Disneyland, they were told they wouldn't be able to leave the building for eight days.
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'I told the police that even if it means I'll die, I want to go out' "They said they were both fine, just anxious to get out, because there's not much to do, and the food is not too great," Mari's sister, Anzel Strydom, told The Star yesterday.
They are also missing their 11-month-old daughter Anya.
"She doesn't really understand what's going on. But when they call and speak to her, she laughs. You can see in her eyes she misses them," said Strydom.
The couple left South Africa on April 21 and are booked to fly home on Sunday.
The Hong Kong government is facing pressure to release the guests. Experts have said the quarantine is an overreaction, as the threat of a global pandemic appears to be ebbing.
Tensions have been rising at the hotel, which is sealed off by armed police and medics in protective clothing.
Guests complained that their rooms had not been cleaned or bedding changed, and one quarantined guest, a South Korean businessman called Jimmy, phoned a local radio station to complain, saying the lock-in would lose him a lucrative contract.
"I told the police that even if it means I'll die, I want to go out," he said in an emotional call. "I don't want to die in this lousy hotel."
Another quarantined guest, Indian businessman Kevin Ireland, 45, told German Press Agency dpa by phone that the lock-in appeared pointless as delivery people were allowed in and out of the hotel.
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