A woman has described her experience of quarantining in a plane lavatory for five hours after testing positive for COVID-19 midflight. Marisa Fotieo posted a TikTok video of her experience in the makeshift isolation facilities which has already been watched more than 4.5 million times.
Fotieo had been flying with Icelandair from Chicago to Reykjavik in time for Christmas but only a short time into the flight she says she started to experience a sore throat.
@marisaefotieo Shout out to @Icelandair for my VIP quarantine quarters.. luxuryliving imsolucky covid vaccinated fyp viralvideotiktok quarantine
Fearing the worst, Fotieo got out a rapid antigen test she had packed in her carry-on for her trip and went straight to the bathroom. In an interview with NBC’s Today programme, Fotieo says it only felt like two seconds for the test strip to show up with two lines indicating a positive result.
Scared that she might infect her seat maters, Fotieo decided the only option was to isolate in the lavatory for the rest of the flight.
“There’s 150 people on the flight, and my biggest fear was giving it to them,” Fotieo told Today.
Thankfully, one of Icelandair’s flight attendants came to the rescue and made sure Fotieo had snacks and drinks to keep her as comfortable as possible for the remainder of the flight.
On arrival in Iceland, Fotieo was whisked into the slightly more comfortable surroundings of hotel quarantine. The flight attendant, who has been identified as Ragnhildur ‘Rocky’ Eiríksdóttir, even brought gifts for Fotieo including flowers to make her forced stay in Reykjavik more bearable.
Under Iceland’s existing pandemic travel rules, vaccinated travellers must have a negative COVID-19 test within 72-hours of departure. Some countries have reduced the timeframe for rapid antigen tests because, while they are very good at picking up positive cases when someone is actively infectious, they aren’t as accurate in identifying a positive case within a few days of symptom onset.
And while Iceland requires its own citizens and residents to test again on arrival, visitors like Fotieo are not currently required to take a post-arrival test.
There is more to this story. For example, her family members continued on to Switzerland (after testing negative I believe) so shouldn’t they have required them to isolate or quarantine as well? Not only did they likely sit next to her while she was already sick but lived within the same family unit bubble. Also, I believe this person is a Chicago school teacher, an organization that is requesting remote learning only in response to the current covid conditions, yet she is flying off to Europe?
So she has a mask on, and everyone in the plane is required to wear one, so why the worry? Masking protects everyone right? DaninMCI is correct. 91% of Chicagos teachers said they don’t feel safe going back to in person learning. Safe from what? They’ve all been vaccinated, You can’t have it both ways, telling us masks and vaccinations work, yet whining you don’t feel safe! Which is it?