Quarantine | Couple held in isolation share what it’s like inside

A couple that is currently in isolation at Coloane Alto’s Centro Clínico de Saúde Pública and whose case was reported during yesterday’s daily press conference of the Novel Coronavirus Response and Coordination Center told the Times their experience and how the Macau residents had ended up in isolation during a visit to the hospital.
Under the agreement of anonymity, the man under quarantine told the Times about their circumstances.
“My wife is Spanish, and the kids are in Spain already for some time. They left for Spain at the time that the first cases of Covid-19 started to surface in Macau,” he said, about one and a half months ago.
“She was there for a week to visit them and after returning on Wednesday [March 4] she started feeling her throat was a bit sore, but she was not even sick,” he explained. Later, on Sunday (March 8), he also began to feel unwell and developed a fever in the evening and throughout Monday as well as throat and body pain. “On Tuesday I was feeling better already but I thought it was a good idea to do the test [of the Covid-19] just to ensure it was nothing related to that.”
Upon arrival at the hospital, the man was told that he and his wife were considered of “high-risk” because they had recently traveled in Spain and now had a fever. They were immediately isolated and tested for the coronavirus.
After that, they were taken into a room and told that they had to wait for the results of the test and, even if it was negative, they must have a second test 48 hours after the first one.
After the acknowledgment of the test results, which turned out to be negative, the couple was informed that they would be taken to the Coloane facility (Centro Clínico de Saúde Pública), but at around 2 a.m. “they returned and informed that it was not possible to do so as the driver was already off duty.”
After spending the night at Centro Hospital Conde de São Januário, yesterday morning they were finally taken to the Coloane facility where the couple says the living conditions are “great.”
Besides that, they told the Times that they are basically living in prison. “They come and give us the food through a drawer like in a prison,” the man explained, drawing the analogy.
According to the information provided by the Health Bureau, they will stay in the facility until the second test that they expect to be complete by around 5 p.m. this afternoon. “After that, we were told we need to wait another six to eight hours for the results of the second test, this means that we will stay here probably until the early hours of tomorrow until we can return home,” he said.
The man also said he was never seen by a physician about his light fever and throat pain, nor was he given medication for it.
The couple also told the Times that some of the information disclosed about their case during yesterday’s daily press conference by local health authorities was, in fact, inaccurate. Having accessed the press conference via the internet, the man disputed the government’s report that they had a cough and other symptoms.
Questioned on whether they would still go to the hospital the next time such symptoms were detected, the couple laughed and said, “Probably not. We probably will stay home and wait for [the symptoms] to go away.”