Inside 14 days of quarantine, hotels and gaps in guidelines

With more than 250,000 confirmed cases, and 10,544 deaths from Covid-19 pandemic globally, and at least 15 cases in East Africa, Uganda has put in place strict measures to deter the pandemic from spreading to the country.

On Wednesday, President Museveni stopped any more self-isolation for people coming from Category One countries and ordered that all would be required to undergo mandatory 14-day quarantine at designated places at their own costs.

The restriction has since Tuesday night seen hundreds of travellers from those countries held at Entebbe airport and transported to designated hotels for the 14-day quarantine.

The quarantine is a precautionary measure to restrict movements of travellers who may have been exposed to the virus until it’s established they don’t have it.

Health ministry permanent secretary Diana Atwine said three hotels have been designated to accommodate the growing number of travellers being quarantined. Health minister Jane Ruth Aceng said travellers from China, Denmark, Austria, Switzerland, South Korea, The Netherlands, and Sweden would be quarantined at Imperial Botanical Hotel, Entebbe.

Most Ugandans flying into the country and some foreigners are being quarantined at Central Inn Hotel, Entebbe.

The Health officials did not specify details of the other hotels or alternative facilities to be used for the quarantine, citing privacy concerns from hotel owners.

Dr Atwine said the criteria used for picking the hotels was based on the willingness of the hotel owners to accommodate the people.

She said other hotel owners had declined to accommodate the quarantined people.
Inside quarantine hotels

Central Inn Hotel, one of the hotels accommodating the quarantined, is on lock down, only accessible to authorised personnel.

Dr Atwine said the security of the area has been beefed up to deter quarantined people from leaving and stop any unauthorised access.

“We are beefing up the security at these places because some people are refusing to be quarantined and want to leave; which we won’t allow until the 14 days of quarantine are over,” Dr Atwine said.

At the hotel, several relatives of those quarantined were seen haggling with the security personnel at the gate to allow them see their loved ones but all in vain. Inside the hotel, some of those quarantined sat in groups in a huge tent on the hotel compound, discussing their fate.

An ambulance and a van were kept busy shuttling between the airport and various points, including Entebbe Grade B Hospital, and dropping them off at Central Inn Hotel.

A man who had relative quarantined at Central Inn said his sister from the UK was brought to the hotel on Wednesday night and she didn’t have where to sleep until Thursday evening when they secured a room.

“They are not allowing us to bring cooked food for our sister, yet she doesn’t want the food offered here, and there is no one at the gate to listen to our cries,” he said.

Some visitors were later allowed to talk across the gate with some of those quarantined.

Jimmy Spire Ssentongo, a Ugandan being quarantined at Central Inn, expressed dissatisfaction with the handling on his social media, saying there are no health workers to attend to them, and no safety measures for the quarantined since Tuesday evening.

He posted: “We had been herded at high infection risk and dumped here. No safety information or measures at all. No health officer came to follow up on us until we made online ‘noise’ and officials came to apologise and make promises. No one was concerned that people were leaving!
How would they know since they never cared to follow up!”

He said the conditions did not meet the most basic standards of quarantine and were contrary to its goals.

This critical post by Ssentongo and several similar others with tales of what was happening in the quarantine attracted a lot of concern from the public on social media, prompting Health minister Aceng and her team to visit the facility and establish what was taking place.

In one of the videos shared online, Dr Aceng is seen in a heated debate with the people quarantined in a hot exchange amid boos.

“We have provided you with hotels but if you don’t want them you, have an option; get a ticket and go back,” the minister is heard saying.

Hotel costs
Those quarantined at Central Inn said the price per night for each person was cut from $100 (about Shs375,000) to $55 (about Shs207,000) per night for the 14 days.

The ministry said the rate was agreed on between the hotels and those quarantined in consultation with the Uganda Tourism Board.

This charge raised an uproar from the public that argued that government should foot the costs since some people, especially Ugandans, could not afford hotel bills. But Dr Atwine later responded that the ministry had identified affordable hotels, or schools where they had to foot only food costs.

Loopholes in quarantine
In two of the hotels used to quarantine, there were obvious gaps in following guidelines issued by government in checking the spread of coronavirus.

At Central Inn Hotel, with more than 50 people quarantined, the majority had no masks, no sanitisers’ and were interacting freely against the advice on physical or social distancing.
The hotel workers had no gloves although some wore masks, but all mingled freely with those quarantined.

At Imperial Botanical Hotel, Entebbe, another quarantine site, access was open to visitors, with hotel workers freely walking in and out the hotel premises and relatives of those quarantined allowed to bring in clothes and food.

Despite the obvious lapses, Dr Atwiine insisted they had issued safety measures to the hotels gazetted for quarantine.

Since Tuesday night, this newspaper has established that some travellers have since sneaked out of the designated areas for quarantine and opted for their own self-isolation as far away as Kampala.

Drama as Chinese reject quarantine
A group of Chinese nationals taken for quarantine at Imperial Botanical Hotel in Entebbe rejected the hotel and were driven to Tirupati Hotel in Naguru in Kampala, about 50 kilometres away. But this move was strongly criticised by Ugandans after a video was posted on social media, showing the drama.

When contacted, Dr Atwiine, said they had not authorised the movement to Kampala, but asked police to intervene once they were alerted.

The police spokesperson, Mr Fred Enanga, said they visited the place and decided to have the Chinese quarantined at Tirupati Hotel in Kampala.