These Families Traveled Twice Across the World to Stay Ahead of Coronavirus. They ’re Learning Nowhere Is Safe

Mary Wong fled her native Hong Kong on Feb. 20 with her one-year-old daughter and her husband. The situation there looked grim—the city had 70 cases of COVID-19 and two deaths, and officials were refusing calls to fully close the border with mainland China. To stay safe, Wong and her family decided to fly halfway across the world to Philadelphia, where her husband is from. There were no cases there yet, and just 15 in the U.S. They planned to stay for up to two months to avoid the worst of the COVID-19 outbreak that was increasingly threatening China’s neighbors. Less than a month later, she fled again, this time back home to Hong Kong—booking her return tickets on March 13, the same day U.S. President Donald Trump declared a national emergency. By that time, the first cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in Philadelphia, hundreds were reported in New York state and cases across the U.S. had soared to more than 2,000. “It was actually an obvious decision to come back,” Wong says. “Hong Kong seemed safer. Even in the suburbs, you don’t know how many people have gone to New York or other states, and come back to Philadelphia.” Wong’s family is one of several that fled Asia as the coronavirus spread across China, only to decide that their refuge thousands of miles away had suddenly become even riskier. That there-and-back-again ordeal shows the rapid global spread of the virus that causes COVID-19, which has now infected more th...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 News Desk overnight Source Type: news