Source: Xinhua
05-06-2009 14:22
Special Report: Tech MaxBEIJING, May 5 (Xinhua) -- Zeng Ping said he had never been so fussy about his temperature.
"I cannot get too tired or too excited. Emotion and psychological pressure may cause a temperature rise," said Zeng, who is under quarantine in a hotel after arriving in Beijing from Mexico on the same Shanghai-bound flight as a Mexican later confirmed to have contracted A/H1N1 flu.
Three times a day for the past three days, a nurse came to his room and took his temperature. "The most stressful moment was perhaps when the nurse told me how high my temperature was," he said.
Zeng, in his 50s and the deputy director of the China Today magazine's Latin America bureau in Mexico City, was among the 166 passengers who were on the Mexico City-Shanghai flight with the flu patient and who stayed on the Chinese mainland.
All the passengers, who were later tracked down in 18 Chinese provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities, have been on a seven-day quarantine. Fifteen of them, including Zeng, have been quarantined in Beijing since last Saturday.
Zeng said he was woken up by phone calls from Beijing's Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at about 4 am on Saturday and learned that health workers were on their way to his home.
"I was not surprised at all. I've already received phone calls from the district CDC asking whether I was fine the day before," he said.
On Friday night, the 25-year-old Mexican man, who arrived in Hong Kong via Shanghai aboard flight AM098, was confirmed as being infected with A/H1N1 flu virus.
Zeng said he did not know how close he was sitting on the plane to the patient. "I wore a mask all the way from Mexico to China. All the passengers as well as crew members did the same," he said.
An ambulance took Zeng to the Beijing Ditan Hospital, one of the key hospitals in Beijing treating SARS patients in 2003, where he met other passengers.
"We looked at each other and smiled. It's such a unusual reunion," he said.
Zeng and other passengers only stayed in the hospital for half a day. At around 6 pm Saturday, they were moved to the Guomenlu Hotel, which was only 200 meters away from the hospital, in separate ambulances after none of them was found to have A/H1N1 flu symptoms.
"I am isolated in a standard two-bed hotel room. The hotel is more than 10 years old. Facilities are little bit old. But I feel more relax here than in the hospital," he said.
