Came from Denmark – was sent to quarantine hotel – VG
If you test positive when entering Norway, you risk being sent to the quarantine hotel if you cannot travel home on your own.
Sent Wednesday night, Steen Steensen arrived at Oslo Airport after a trip abroad to Denmark. Her test is positive for the coronavirus – and was sent to the quarantine hotel.
– I was shown out to a taxi which drove me to the quarantine hotel. Here I was locked in a room, and on the information letter I received it said that I had to be here for ten days, Steensen says to VG.
– I was shocked, because this was completely new information for me.
Can not travel by public transport
According to Health Norway, quarantine and isolation can be carried out in your own home, but you must be able to get there without traveling by public transport. If you test positive when entering Norway, you risk being sent to the quarantine hotel – regardless of the color of the country you arrived from.
In Steensen’s case, he was sent to the quarantine hotel because he did not have the opportunity to travel home with his own car from time to time.
– Since it was the middle of the night, I could not do much with the situation. I asked a representative of the municipality at the hotel the next day if my wife could drive a car that I could go home in. Then I was told that the municipal doctor in Ullensaker municipality had decided that everyone infected should be here, says Steensen.
In retrospect, Steensen has been told that it is not a question of ten days in isolation at the hotel, but five days. This is also confirmed by the Ministry of Health and Care Services to VG.
– People who have been confirmed to be infected with SARS-CoV-2 but have no symptoms should be isolated for five days at the time of positive testing for SARS-CoV-2, which has been discontinued. People who have been confirmed infected with SARS-CoV-2 and have symptoms must be said for a minimum of 5 days from the start of the disease, they write.
Three criteria
Press contact in Ullensaker municipality, Roger Sandum, says that there are three criteria that are assessed before a traveler is placed in isolation at one of the municipality’s quarantine hotels:
– The first is whether the person has another suitable place to isolate himself, secondly whether he can get there without exposing others to infection on the road and the last is whether there may be grounds for losing that infection is about the omicron variant of the virus.
On Saturday night, Steensen is still at the quarantine hotel. When asked why Steensen was not allowed to leave the hotel in his own car, Sandum answers:
– Based on what we have been informed by VG about this person, it may look like it should be possible for the person to come home without having to meet others on the road, so on the condition that the home is suitable for isolation and that it is not suspected omikron, then I can not understand other than that it should be possible.
Some information
Steensen tells VG that none of the three criteria were examined after he tested positive. He states that he fully understands that infected people are sent in hotel quarantine, but that he reacts to the handling of the situation.
– No one asked if I could get home with my own car or if I could isolate myself at home. It was not a single question – just talk about transporting me to the hotel, as if it was completely out of the question with other alternatives, he says.
– I have calmed down with the situation, but at first I was quite upset and desperate because I do not think I got enough information about my options, he says.
Steensen says that he has mild symptoms, and expresses that he is fine at the hotel.
– There is a lot that is good about this scheme, and I have to be isolation with the infected. After all, we live in a country where it is possible to implement the quarantine hotel, and I will in no way contribute to more risk or contagion in society.