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Singapore travellers infected overseas tell how they got through their ordeals

As travel picks up once more, catching Covid-19 has become a real possibility for those venturing abroad. The Straits Times speaks to three Singaporeans who had their travel plans upended when they fell sick with the virus.

Seasoned traveller recovers from Covid-19 in the United States, but tests positive on return

Last Christmas Eve, finance manager Nicole Chee was meant to be on a flight home. Instead, she called her husband from the US to say she had tested positive for Covid-19 and would not be home for the holidays.

Not wanting him to worry and to focus instead on caring for their daughter and son, aged nine and seven, she assured him she was fine. The symptoms, she said, were just like the flu.

But when she hung up the phone, the 42-year-old, who was in Florida on a business trip with colleagues, could not hold back her tears.

"Physically, it felt worse than the flu. I couldn't sleep well, had chills up and down my spine, coughed up phlegm, had a fever and neck ache. It was torturous," says Ms Chee, who is vaccinated.

So, while her colleagues returned home, she convalesced in a hotel, watching via video call as her husband, a 48-year-old accountant, took their kids to McDonald's on Christmas Day.

Meanwhile, she loaded up on fruit and tea to boost her immune system, hoping she would be able to return before the new year.

It was her second trip to Florida during the pandemic. But because of the Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) scheme, this trip was supposed to be more straightforward than her previous two.

Ms Chee was part of a team handling a major acquisition for her company. Her first trip was in December 2020, during the thick of the virus outbreak and what the US regards as its deadliest month of the pandemic. She served a 14-day stay-home notice (SHN) on her return, and enjoyed the time alone to work, rest and watch TV undisturbed.

Ms Nicole Chee (third from right) during a business trip to Naples, Florida, last year.PHOTO: NICOLE CHEE

When she tested positive for Covid-19 during her pre-departure polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, Ms Chee said she was mostly calm.

Video calls with her family were a pick-me-up. So was retail therapy as she shopped online for the whole family - sending packages of food, clothes and electronics both to her hotel room in the US and Singapore address.

Her symptoms receded after three days and she tested negative on the sixth day.

Finally returning home in early January was a relief, said Ms Chee. As it was not a VTL flight, she had to serve a seven-day SHN and opted to do it at the Fairmont Singapore hotel.

With her children preparing for the new school year, she did not want to risk bringing Covid-19 into their home. It proved to be a prudent choice.

Jetlagged upon touchdown, she checked into the hotel and fell asleep, waking hours later to a flurry of e-mails and messages from the Ministry of Health and Immigration and Checkpoints Authority. Her on-arrival PCR test had come back positive.

"I laughed," says Ms Chee, floored by the incredulity of the situation. Asymptomatic by then, she speculated that virus fragments had remained in her body, which the on-arrival test picked up.

She adds that Singapore's on-arrival test may have been more stringent, as her pre-departure test in the US did not include a throat swab.

She had to extend her SHN by another three days - thankfully a breeze after her previous stints.

Through her experience, she believes staying upbeat and mentally strong was her biggest asset. "Though it would have been easy to fall into negativity, I somehow found a force in me that kept my spirits up, so I could focus on recovery," she says.

Stranded in France, she watches brother's wedding via video call

At her elder brother's wedding last November, a stuffed toy depicting a Japanese cartoon character took Ms Ho Ming Xia's place at the table.

She was in Paris, France, recovering from Covid-19. Frustrated and disappointed, the 26-year-old had to settle for watching the highlights of the ceremony over a video call with her elder sister.

"I had been so careful by avoiding bars and crowded places in the week before I was due to return," says Ms Ho, who works as head of community at Draper Startup House, and travelled to multiple cities in Europe on a business trip.

The company offers various services to digital nomads and entrepreneurs, including accommodation, co-working spaces and access to venture capital funding.

Ms Ho Ming Xia, who is head of community at Draper Startup House, travelled to multiple cities in Europe on a four-month-long business trip last year.PHOTO: HO MING XIA

She left last August after getting vaccinated - stopping in Croatia first, and made plans to return to Singapore from France after the VTL scheme was launched.

But what she thought was a garden-variety winter cold, exacerbated by walking in the rain, turned out to be Covid-19. Ms Ho found out after a travel companion tested positive for the virus, though she believes she was the one who passed it to him as she experienced flu symptoms first.

"I broke down when the test result was out," says Ms Ho, who felt like she was letting her family down by missing the wedding.

Fearing her brother's anger and disappointment, she told his wife-to-be before breaking the news to him. But her family responded only with kindness.

While holed up in an Airbnb apartment in Paris, Ms Ho spent hours on the phone with her sister, who offered a listening ear and kept her updated on the wedding preparations.

Sketching and journaling provided an outlet to sort through her feelings. Ms Ho also did a lot of laundry, cooked and tasted a slice of lemon daily - to test if her sense of smell and taste was returning.

Despite these distractions, it was a lonely time. Not wanting friends and loved ones to worry, she kept the news to a handful of confidantes. But others, not knowing about the situation, continued to text her about her travels.

"They would ask, 'How is Paris? How is the Champs-Elysees?' Yeah, I hadn't been there either," she says with a laugh, referring to the French capital's famous shopping street.

She adds that self-isolating in a foreign country forced her to rely on herself. On social media, she watched as those recovering back home could easily order food or have friends send care packages.

The experience taught her not to take the little things - such as the smell of coffee or fresh laundry - for granted.

After recovering and spending 14 days in isolation, Ms Ho extended her trip by about a month as there were work opportunities in other cities. She put aside her thrifty ways to savour new culinary experiences, including trying escargot in France and rabbit meat in Italy for the first time.

She visited a total of seven countries on the trip and returned to Singapore just before Christmas.

"Life is so unpredictable, I wanted to notice and appreciate every part of travel that I could," she says.

Used to living with endemic Covid-19, friends hosted him while he recovered

What unnerved Mr Sudhir Vadaketh when he caught Covid-19 was losing his sense of smell.

So, for the 10 days he self-isolated at a friend's home in San Francisco, he regularly sniffed on a box of gummies. Picking up the sour, fruity smell was a small source of comfort amid a tide of worry.

By his own admission, Mr Vadaketh, 44, was "lucky". He was asymptomatic - likely due to the vaccine he had received two months before his trip.

No one in his friend's family, or whom he had met prior to testing positive, had caught the virus from him. And though he was a long way from home, he had a safety net of close friends to stay with.

Mr Sudhir Vadaketh (right) with a friend during his trip to the United States and Canada last year.PHOTO: SUDHIR VADAKETH

Last September, the freelance writer embarked on a two-month solo trip in the United States and Canada. Part-reunion, part-vacation, he was travelling to see family and friends as well as to take a break.

Had the world not been stricken by Covid-19, Mr Vadaketh would have travelled sooner to see his uncle in Toronto, Canada, who was ill. But his uncle, who was also Mr Vadaketh's godfather, died of non-Covid-19-related long-term medical issues last June - at a time when borders were still closed.

So, when Canada opened up to international tourists, Mr Vadaketh decided to visit his aunt and cousins. His wife, a 42-year-old conservation officer, did not join him as she could not get that much time off work. The couple have no children.

He headed to the US first, where he spent a halcyon two weeks in the San Francisco Bay Area, visiting old schoolmates from the University of California, Berkeley, where he did his undergraduate degree.

Hiking in California's redwood forests and taking long walks on the beach brought a sense of expansiveness he had missed in Singapore.

All that was halted when a family friend he stayed with contracted the virus and Mr Vadaketh tested positive shortly after. Concerned about passing it to the friends he was staying with - the family included three children and elderly parents who visited regularly - he offered to move to a hotel.

But his friends, accustomed to living with endemic Covid-19, insisted he stay.

They wore masks at home, availed a bathroom solely for his use, and put food and drink outside his room door daily - "the most attentive and indulgent quarantine service", he says.

Mr Vadaketh believes their kindness and composure stemmed from being used to living with Covid-19. Their eldest daughter, 13, had also recovered from the virus the month before.

"For a lot of the people I met in the US, somebody in their immediate orbit has had Covid-19. There is more familiarity with the disease and people really treated it as endemic," he says.

He spent most of his isolation stint working, reading and watching Netflix, but allowed himself one long walk daily. These walks, which he went on masked up and alone in nature, helped temper the mundanity of his days.

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines recommend that those who test positive for Covid-19 self-isolate for five days, but to be safe, Mr Vadaketh did so for 10.

He then carried on with his trip. But travelling as a recently recovered patient had unexpected effects. Some friends were leery of hosting him in their homes, so Mr Vadaketh booked a hotel when he was in New York.

In Toronto, he stayed with his relatives and returned to Singapore via the VTL scheme.

He estimates that the additional costs - including accommodation, rebooking flights and Covid-19 tests - tacked on another $2,000 to his trip.

But he says the sense of freedom and reconnecting with loved ones were worth it.

"We've just gone through one of the defining events of our generation. You feel some connectedness with people because everyone has experienced Covid-19 together, although in different ways."

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