Thread by @laurelchor

I’ve landed in Hong Kong after flying from Paris CDG, via London Heathrow. I now have to wait ~8 hours before I get my #COVID19 test results and thus have ample time to tweet about my experience.

At CDG, the @British_Airways check-in staff wore masks and gloves. Masks are mandatory inside the airport. But on the plane to London, and on my next flight to HK, no BA staff wore masks, surprisingly.

The captain on my LHR > HKG flight said there were about 100 of us on the plane. That means the Boeing 777 was at 1/3 of its capacity. Every single passenger (except someone who apparently had special permission to connect to Brunei) will enter some sort of quarantine.

I just went through this, but there were so many steps & stations upon arrival in HK that I’ve forgotten half. I filled in a quarantine order + a health declaration, was made to download an app, received a tracking bracelet, had it registered. Someone checked my phone # worked.

A health dept official officially signed & stamped my quarantine declaration in duplicate. He was nice & friendly, explaining that I could go yumcha on the morning of the 28th. He asked if I had someone to take care of me & if I had a thermometer. When I hesitated, he gave me one

He showed me how to fill in my symptom + temperature tracking table, explained that I needed to fill in another form with the details of my method of transportation home (eg license plate #). Everything was in a manila folder. He told me not to worry & wished me good health.

After receiving my bracelet and my thermometer, I went on through immigration and got my bags as normal. On the other side we were directed onto buses and young men in full protection gear helped load our bags onto the bus.

We were given bright orange lanyards to be marked as people to be tested. The testing and waiting take place in different giant halls at Asia World Expo. A tag # (associated with our test) would eventually be clipped to our lanyard.

After dropping off our bags in one place and getting luggage tags; we got back on the bus as were dropped off at another facility. There we stood in line to get our testing packs. A health worker gave us our tag number, our packs, and explained how to conduct the self-test.

Then we sat and watched a detailed helpful, video on how to conduct the self-test.

Here’s a time lapse of me awkwardly doing my self-test in my booth: I made a “kruuuar” sound as instructed to hock up my deep-throat saliva & spit it into a tube (w/ the help of a paper funnel) and double-bagged it. Several ppl made sure the tube was upright when I handed it in.

I thought someone would swab me and wasn’t expecting a self-test but it was simple enough. When it came time to hock up deep throat spit, I was grateful for the thoughtful courtesy of the private booths.

I had to delete a tweet because I accidentally revealed some personal information, so click through to the rest of the thread: