Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia.
— Charles Schulz (1922, 2000), American Illustrator
A few days ago I was talking to a dear friend of mine. A person I see very seldom but to whom I am linked by a deep friendship. She is, like many of my friends, what I call a third-nation citizen: she was born in A, she studied in B and she lives in C. We were talking about Covid quarantines. Me about the Italian one, and her about the Israeli one (how conversations have changed haven’t they? A year ago we would have been talking about men). She was telling me about the differences between Israel, the country she comes from, which forces anyone returning home to wear a GPS bracelet to monitor their movements, and Germany, the country she lives in, which does not allow personal data exchanges to the point that not even public bodies can exchange information about Covid patients.
This led me to wonder how each nation is implementing the isolation requirement. It’s easy to say “stay in for two weeks,” but how do you control that it’s actually done? Am I revealing a bit too much of a Mediterranean mentality asking such a question, that implies that people won’t naturally follow the rules? Maybe, but bear with me.
Quarantine has been judged by this Nature article not to be the most effective method to lower the Rt index. As a spoiler: the most effective are curfew, lockdown and closing every place where people can meet – work, bars, schools etc., but such measures are also called by the authors “the nuclear option”, very efficient but destructive to society, the economy, commerce and human rights. Nonetheless, quarantine remains one of the most popular tools to control the movements of incoming people. What follows is an overview of interviews with colleagues, friends and acquaintances around the world, who have kindly lent themselves to help us understand what the quarantine looks like ten thousand kilometers from here. I wondered whether if you tell me what quarantine you do, and I’ll tell you where you are. Happy reading!
Israel has been closing its ports for the past year, and only citizens residing in Israel can enter and leave the nation. After experimenting with everything from Mossad-borrowed counter-terrorism style tracking measures, to a controversial tracking system controlled by the Minister of Security, currently anyone returning from a trip abroad has two options: wear an electronic bracelet equipped with a GPS, which allows local police to make sure the quarantine has not been violated, or spend the quarantine in a hotel (at state expense). Apparently South Korea, Hong Kong, and Bulgaria have also adopted such measures. For some more information on electronic bracelets read here (in Hebrew, but Google translates it easily)
In Sweden, the containment strategy was fairly “relaxed” in the spring of 2020, but has gradually become stricter. Very few people wear masks, and there is no need to sign in at restaurants (which are still open). Travelers from Europe must show a negative test upon entry, and a week-long quarantine is recommended.
Quarantines are only a recommendation; they are not strictly enforced. But if you are a non-Swedish citizen traveling from outside the EU, you need some kind of exception to be let in.
From my experience, the population is divided into two bimodal groups. Some are very careful, and haven’t met a single person (sometimes even family members) indoors for a year. Others seem to pretend there is no pandemic, even now in the midst of a third wave: the bar across the street from my building is a hotspot for young people on weekends, despite the fact that alcohol sales are banned after a certain hour. Shopping malls are also crowded on weekends. At first, the Public Health Authority did not encourage the use of masks, with the idea that it was not an efficient way to stop the spread of the pandemic. That stance has changed slightly in recent months, but people are now so used to not wearing them that the behavior seems hard to change.
[If you’d like to read more about how the experiment in Sweden went, the New Yorker just published a dossier that you can find it here. Spoiler: went sort of OK, but they lost a lot of people in care homes]
In order to manage tracking and quarantines, the government of Qatar has created an app called Ehteraz – prevention in Arabic – that you must have and download and turn on when you leave your home. With this app, which works with a color-code, if you are “green” you can enter public places, and the app is checked at the entrance along with your temperature. It works with bluetooth and sends you notifications in case you’re near a suspect case.
In general, if you are quarantined at home, you have a test booked on day 6; you must answer calls and agree to receive visits from the public health team responsible for monitoring. During the quarantine period, the app changes from green to yellow. In case of a positive Covid-19 test, the Ministry of Health decides whether you will be quarantined at home or in a Covid center (not a hospital but a kind of hotel/alternative place in case you live with other people who are not your family members). In this case the quarantine lasts 14 days and the color of the Ehteraz app is changed from green to yellow. Obviously, if you are a “yellow” code you cannot leave the house.
In case of travel, if you return from a country on the so-called green list, in addition to testing prior and after arrival, you must observe the quarantine at home for 7 days. If you return from a country not on the “green list” (e.g. countries with new covid variants), you must book a week of quarantine in a covid-19 hotel in Qatar at your own expense. If you return from any country but you are vaccinated (with vaccines done in Qatar), your app code will be yellow/gray (I am not sure about the color yet because it’s a new rule) until you receive the test result, and then you do NOT have to do quarantine.
In March 2020, during the first wave, Quebec’s rules were chaotic. Every non-essential store was closed and masks became mandatory, as well as the 2-meter distance (which is measured as the length of a field hockey stick here!). As for immigration, by Canadian federal government rule, quarantine was set at 2 weeks. People would get phone calls from immigration during this time to make sure they were home.
Then the second wave came, and we’ve been on lockdown since November 1st 2020. Bars and restaurants are only open for take out and deliveries (UberEats has some success here…). With the arrival of winter, all activities resumed indoors, and many measures were implemented to contain the virus outbreak. The province was then color-coded according to the number of cases. Montreal has been in the red code (the worst) ever since. And again, since the end of November there has been a curfew from 8 pm in the red zone and from 9:30 pm in the orange zone. This is reinforced by police patrolling the streets and issuing fines of up to $1,000 ($1,000! What the heck! Who has $1,000 in their bank account!).
As for those traveling from abroad, the 14-day quarantine is reinforced, with someone showing up at the door to check, sometimes more than once during the lockdown period. There’s also a mandatory daily update of your health status via a government app. Since mid-February, everyone entering Canada is required to spend quarantine in a hotel room (about $6,000 Canadian for 2 weeks, not covered by the State).
On a more personal note, I would say that the implementation of government measures varies in each country (e.g. our closest neighbor, the United States!), but it also depends on the underlying mindset of a society. I remember being quite surprised when I arrived in Quebec, as people respected the rules. In France [editor’s note: Julie is French] there is an unwritten mentality that every rule is there to be circumvented. Here it’s not like that, quite the contrary.
On a more positive note regarding government policy and the pandemic, Canadians who lost their jobs during the pandemic were granted a Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), of about $2,000 per month. In addition, many government funds were awarded to all businesses that suffered from the shutdown or various health measures.
In Bogotá, quarantines are self-regulated. People are trusted to leave on the scheduled day and stay home when necessary. There are active civic education campaigns to emphasize the importance of isolation to prevent the spread of the virus. There is a history of these types of campaigns in Bogota. Over the last 20 years or so they have been going on constantly on different topics (e.g., obeying traffic rules, lowering aggression, not drinking and driving, etc.). We talk about “citizen education,” which is more of a civic education. In addition to this, there are random police checks on the streets and government offices, banks, markets…
As a result, Bogota’s Covid plan works halfway between Oslo and Rio de Janeiro. There is compliance with a large percentage of the population as well as many cases of non-compliance. Also, there are many exceptions to the mobility exceptions, I think 46 different cases.
A little curiosity: in Bogotà and other large cities in Colombia, there is a limited mobility system in which citizens can leave their homes based on their citizenship identification number. Citizens with even ID numbers can leave on even dates, and citizens with odd numbers on odd days of the month. Prior to the ID-based mobility restriction, there had been an initial gender-based restriction: females could go out on even days and males on odd days. However, there was much controversy, and it was quickly abandoned. There were some strong supporters of this measure, including feminist groups who argued that the initiative created a much safer environment for women to experience the city. I personally liked the idea. But there were also strong critics who argued that this was a discriminatory initiative.
The Hungarians are extremely strict about checking people returning to Hungary after a trip outside the country. The police reinforce the quarantine by going to knock on the doors of the quarantined, to check that they are home. Theoretically they should come every day for the entire 10 days of quarantine. The control is very strict if you return to the airport, but not if you cross the border by car. Tourists without residence in Hungary are currently not allowed. The Hungarian government has authorized itself to track phones of civilians, and they use GPS to track the movements of those in quarantine.
Australia has mandatory hotel quarantine for anyone returning from overseas (at the passenger’s expense), except for those flying from New Zealand.
Travelling between the UK and Italy on a regular basis for work shows the contrast in the approach of these two badly Covid-hit European countries.
Both countries require a pre-travel Covid test taken within 72 hours of departure. The UK has a quarantine for anyone returning from overseas (10 days with required Covid tests on Day 2 and Day 8 paid by the traveller (around £240), but you can “test to release” on Day 5 for an extra £120 – although, oddly, you must still do the Day 8 test. If you arrive in the UK from a “red-list” country you must stay in a “quarantine hotel”- again at your own expense of £1750 – for 10 days.
Currently, you need a valid reason for entry into either country (work, study, residency, but not holiday etc) and in Italy, when travelling from the UK you need to quarantine for 14 days, and get tested on arrival. In some entry points (Milan and Rome airports for example) you are ushered through a test area on arrival which is provided free of charge. Elsewhere RT-PCR tests (the only ones currently accepted for travel) can be had for 60-80€, about half the price of a UK test, but the UK testing industry fiercely denies any profiteering . The UK “test and trace” system, to track infection spread, has been widely criticised for its lack of efficiency, and its uptake seems low, with returning travellers being largely trusted to abide by the quarantine rules, your whereabouts possibly checked by a phone call (on a mobile phone?), although the threat of an enforcement visit exists.
In Italy, experience shows that no-one checked that quarantine was being obeyed for UK travellers, still necessary even if the on-arrival test was negative. Despite vaccination, in the UK at least, tests will still be required after arrival.
If you haven’t had enough of pandemics, here are some niche movies for the weekend.
THE CASSANDRA CROSSING | Since we’re in the mood for rebellious Swedes who don’t abide by the rules, here’s a bizarre 70’s movie starring Sophia Loren and Burt Lancaster about a group of Swedish terrorists who firstly attack the WHO, then accidentally infect themselves with a mysterious virus created in a lab, and then in turn infect an entire Swiss train on its way to Stockholm. Will the train still arrive on time?
THE BAY | The natural progeny of The Blair Witch Project – at least in stylistic terms – the mockumentary shows an entire town going mad because of a virus that spreads in the water. Not a big deal in itself, but, just like The Blair Witch Project, there are moments when you almost believe it.
PONTYPOOL | One of those movies that I had to call the guy who passed it on to me to get him to explain it. In Pontypool the pandemic spreads through sound – similar in concept to Birdbox (where you get sick through sight instead of hearing) although less elaborate, and without the great Sandra Bullock. The story is told by an old dj-cowboy with the voice and the vice of a 7 a.m. whiskey drinker . Claustrophobic and unexpected, and not set in the eponymous South Wales town.
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