Granite Bay Couple Forced Into 14-Day Quarantine In Texas After Getting Off Infected Ship
LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE, TX (CBS13) — A man from Granite Bay says he and his wife have begun a new quarantine at a Texas Air Force Base after finally getting off the infected cruise ship in Japan.
The couple was evacuated on one of two State Department chartered flights to the U.S. with confirmed coronavirus cases onboard.
It's been a long time since Otis Menasco and his wife Carol set foot on U.S. soil. He told CBS13 these seven weeks are the longest the couple's spent away from home. But they still aren't able to make their way back to Granite Bay because they're still under 14-day quarantine for the coronavirus.
"We're really in kind of a jail, in a sense," Menasco said.
He and his wife are just two of the Americans who evacuated the Diamond Princess cruise ship for home.
"They simply weren't prepared for what they were trying to do," Menasco said. "We all loaded on a bus and we sat there for almost two hours."
Menasco shared photos with CBS13 of their travels inside the State Department chartered flight back to the U.S. He said the flight was rough and he wasn't talking about turbulence.
"It was very cold. It was pretty miserable actually," Menasco said. "We didn't have restrooms. We had porta-potties on the plane, to tell you how rough the situation was. You can imagine what they started to smell like after 14 hours."
The couple also had the fear of flying home with the 14 people who tested positive for the coronavirus.
READ: Case Of Coronavirus Confirmed In Napa County; Patient Was Evacuated From Cruise Ship In Japan
"They were in a tented plastic area and, of course, people were asking questions," Menasco said.
Menasco told CBS13 that he was especially concerned considering his health history.
"We were extremely worried. I'm a cancer survivor for almost five years and my immune system isn't at a level that's the best," Menasco said.
Adding more insult to injury with the flight back to the states, they found out four hours into the flight that they were being flown to Lackland Air Force Base instead of Travis Air Force Base, which is just an hour away from home.
"We were just totally in shock and disappointed but I guess what offset that was that we were leaving that ship," Menasco said.
Since touch down in Texas, the couple says medical crews are checking on them. Menasco told CBS13 the crews have been checking their temperature for signs and symptoms of the coronavirus.
They're allowed to go outside to a certain extent and still wear surgical masks when doing so. And they're being fed three times a day.
"The room was fairly small but you know you can't ask for too much in a situation like this," Menasco said.
This couple trading one quarantine for another; still worried they're not out of the woods just yet.
"We have had the fear that maybe it was passed around in that plane and since we even got to these rooms," Menasco said.
