‘I’m So Sorry’: Coronavirus Survivor’s Cross-China Travel Left Dozens Quarantined – Wall Street Journal

Jan. 22

Shenzhen

pop. 13 million

Mr. Shen is also living proof that some Chinese countermeasures are working: He was quarantined early after quick-thinking local officials in the eastern city of Nanjing contacted him after a friend he had lunch with there on one of his city stops fell ill with the virus.

China’s virus strategy faces a major test starting Monday, when local governments allow people to return to work.

Exactly when and where Mr. Shen picked up the virus is unclear. Although based in Beijing, he travels frequently for work, often visiting construction sites, and had passed through multiple cities since late December. His lunch in Nanjing could have exposed him to the virus, but his doctors and nurses would tell him later that, based on the virus’s average incubation period of 5.2 days, they agreed that he had likely picked it up on his trip through Wuhan in central China on Jan 18.

After arriving at that city’s Wuchang railway station early that day, he took a taxi to a business meeting near the city’s Hankou railway station—situated about a mile from the seafood market where Chinese officials believe the virus first spread to humans, probably via stalls selling wild animal meat. Mr. Shen didn’t set foot in the market. It had closed on Jan. 1. He did visit another market that sold groceries and enjoyed a lunch there of hot noodles with stir-fried meat and vegetables.

Like most of Wuhan’s 11 million residents back then, he didn’t take any precautions. Local authorities hadn’t announced any new infections since revealing the first 41 cases on Jan. 2 and were pressing ahead with a Lunar New Year banquet for more than 10,000 families that weekend. It was only over the next week that the number of cases would jump, raising suspicions among many in China—and abroad—that local officials initially tried to cover up the scale of the outbreak.

“The public announcements were all saying that everything is safe,” Mr. Shen said, “so although everyone knew there was pneumonia, nobody cared.”

After his midday meeting in Wuhan, he caught a slow train that afternoon to the southern city of Guangzhou—another megacity with a population of 13 million, where he stayed with a friend for a few days. On his second day there, on Jan. 20, he received a call on his mobile phone. It was a health official from Nanjing.

Mr. Shen had been in Nanjing briefly on Jan. 13 to meet two friends for lunch. The official said one of the two friends—a 52-year-old company manager—had fallen ill and been diagnosed with the coronavirus, possibly from exposure to colleagues who had recently been to Wuhan. Mr. Shen could be infected, the official warned, and should isolate himself. Mr. Shen ignored the advice: He wanted to get home to Shantou.

“Perhaps at the time I didn’t attach enough importance to it, but I didn’t have symptoms then,” he said.

He wrapped himself up warmly, put on two masks, and traveled by train via the city of Shenzhen, population 12.5 million, to Shantou, a city of 5.5. million. From there, he caught a bus to his parent’s house, trying to minimize contact with other people along the way.

It was only after he got there, on Jan. 22 that he heard on the news that experts at China’s National Health Commission had confirmed the virus was spreading person-to-person.

The night Mr. Shen arrived in Shantou he started feeling feverish. He took his temperature. It was 99.1 degrees Fahrenheit, but his temperature normally ran high. When he woke, though, he still felt unwell.

Before he could contact a doctor, the health department in Shantou called to say it had been alerted by colleagues in Nanjing, who had collected his travel details, and had decided to quarantine him. The department was sending an ambulance to his home. At the local hospital, medical staff took a phlegm sample and sent it for a nucleic acid test, the most common method in use around China to identify the virus.

“They said I should on no account leave my home,” Mr. Shen recalls. “They must have been worried that I would run away.”

A positive test result came back the next morning, and a second arrived in the afternoon. On the eve of the Lunar New Year, Mr. Shen was transferred to the First Affiliated Hospital of Shantou University Medical College, which was designated to handle coronavirus cases.

“Previously, I would have been happy at home, with my loved ones, all together,” he said. “Now I’ve been hauled into the hospital like a fish in a net.”

Using the

WeChat

messaging app, he warned relatives and friends to take precautions against the virus. Local officials quarantined his parents and 11 other close contacts at a county hospital, although none of them turned out to be infected. Then local authorities also mapped out his route back to Shantou and issued a public notice to find people who were on the same bus as him. More than 30 of them—some self-reporting, some reported by others—were quarantined in their local hospitals.

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Shantou’s city government announced on Jan. 26 that it would ban cars, ships and people from entering the city, but after locals started panic-buying, it retracted the order and said it would strengthen disease controls instead.

By that point, a CT scan had shown that Mr. Shen had “sporadic nidus”—or areas of infection—in his lungs. He was confined to a quarantine ward of about 20 square yards with three beds, two of which were empty, with no Wi-Fi or television but a new electric kettle. He guessed there were others in the wards next door to him, but he couldn’t hear them.“It was abnormally quiet,” he said.

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With only 14 confirmed cases in Shantou, the hospital wasn’t overwhelmed like those in Wuhan. Since then, the number has climbed to 20, as of Feb. 5.

Each morning began with a series of tests, conducted by medical staff swathed head-to-toe in protective gear: gloves, shoe covers, masks and full body suits. Besides taking his blood pressure and temperature, they would use a cotton swab some 15 centimeters long to gather secretions from his throat. Then they asked him to cough into a transparent cylindrical box.

“Every time I coughed up phlegm, my eyes would get wet. So the nurse would also collect secretions from the conjunctiva of my two eyeballs,” he said.

After a few days, his temperature returned to normal, but he had to keep measuring it himself every other hour, shouting out the result through a microphone to a doctor in the corridor outside.

Every day, he was given antibiotics, an antiretroviral called Kaletra typically used to treat HIV, and Oseltamivir, an antiviral used to treat influenza also known as Tamiflu.

He lost his sense of taste and would occasionally sip soy sauce to try to stimulate his taste buds—although that wasn’t on doctor’s orders. The nurses tried to cheer him up with bowls of beef noodles.

No visitors were allowed. His biggest worry was that he might have infected his parents or other elderly relatives whose immune systems were weak.

“It was really lonely, but luckily they didn’t take away my phone—otherwise I’d go crazy,” he said.

His first negative test for the infection came from the provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention on Jan. 30, but a second test—a National Health Commission one with a lower viral-load threshold—remained positive.

Finally, on Feb. 4, he was given the all-clear.

“I feel so lucky that I had so many professional experts and friends help me, and that I wasn’t severely infected like others,” Mr. Shen said.

Local authorities arranged a car to take him home and doctors told him to stay there until the epidemic subsided.

They didn’t prescribe any follow-up treatment but warned him to follow the advice now being broadcast nationwide: “The old three: Wear masks; wash hands frequently; don’t go out!”

—Raffaele Huang in Beijing contributed to this article.

Write to Jeremy Page at jeremy.page@wsj.com

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