Swine flu scare in China leaves Pfeiffer professor, others stuck in quarantine

Sunday, July 05, 2009 1:05 AM  |  Printer friendly version | E-mail to a friend |

By Jessie Burchette

jburchette@salisburypost.com

What started out as a five-week trip to China studying culture and history for a Salisbury resident has turned into a week quarantined in a Beijing hotel.

Instead of seeing the Great Wall, Dr. Jewell Mayberry is watching Chinese soap operas and struggling with a slow Internet to connect with friends back home.

She is one of 16 educators selected to participate in the 2009 J. William Fulbright Hays Seminar Abroad Program.

Mayberry, who heads the Department of Languages and Literature at Pfeiffer University, contacted the Post through an e-mail describing her experience.

She's spent Independence Day being held in quarantine because of exposure to swine flu.

She left from San Francisco on June 29, arriving in Beijing on June 30.

Someone on the plane had a fever and tested positive for H1N1 or swine flu. On Wednesday, a team dressed in HazMat attire came to the hotel with police officers and rounded up those sitting closest to the infected man.

"We were secreted out of the hotel via the freight elevators and driven by ambulance to a quarantine hotel complete with security gate and armed guards," Mayberry wrote in an e-mail to the Post.

All tested negative for the virus, but officials said they have to stay in quarantine for seven days.

Mayberry and two other members of the Fulbright-Hays group are included in the quarantine.

"It's been quite surreal and immensely uncomfortable. The hotel turned off the air conditioning because of fear of spreading the disease, even through the research shows that the virus can't be spread that way.

"It's about 100 degrees during the day, and with no windows that open, it gets pretty intense inside."

She estimatedabout 160 people from all over the globe are being held at that hotel.

Most of the hotel staff members don't speak English, and those in her group don't speak Chinese.

Mayberry and the others have been watching Chinese soap operas and game shows.

"We got a call from the American Embassy to make sure we were OK, which was nice but doesn't reduce the irony that we're being held against our will on Independence Day."

Mayberry and the Fulbright-Hays group are scheduled to be released Tuesday at 3 p.m. and leave Beijing at 4 p.m. and rejoin the others.

She noted they will probably be the first group of tourists to ever visit Beijing and not see the Great Wall.

Once out of quarantine, she and the other two members of the Fulbright-Hays group will continue with scheduled meetings with public officials, educators and business leaders in five Chinese cities.

Mayberry's husband, David, is a dentist in Salisbury.

Contact Jessie Burchette at 704-797-4254.