A US woman was quarantined in an aeroplane bathroom for three hours after testing positive for COVID-19 halfway through a flight from Chicago to Iceland, according to media reports.
Marisa Fotieo, a teacher from Michigan, said her throat began to hurt halfway through the trip on December 19 so she went to the bathroom to perform a rapid Covid test which confirmed she was infected, WABC-TV reported.
Before the flight, Fotieo told CNN she took two PCR tests and about five rapid tests, all of which came back negative. But about an hour and a half into the flight, Fotieo started to feel a sore throat.
“The wheels started turning in my brain and I thought, ‘OK, I’m going to just go take a test.’ It was going to make me feel better,” Fotieo said. “Immediately, it came back positive.”
Fotieo is fully vaccinated and has received the booster. She tests consistently since she works with an unvaccinated population. When she got her results in the aeroplane bathroom, over the Atlantic Ocean, she said she started to panic. “The first flight attendant I ran into was Rocky. I was hysterical, I was crying,” Fotieo said. “I was nervous for my family who I just had dinner with. I was nervous for the other people on the plane. I was nervous for myself.”
The flight attendant Fotieo ran into helped calm her down, the report added. “Of course, it’s a stress factor when something like this comes up, but that’s part of our job,” the flight attendant told CNN.
The flight attendant said she did what she could to try to rearrange seats so Fotieo could be seated in a spot alone, but the flight was full. “When she came back and told me she couldn’t find enough seating, I opted to stay in the bathroom because I did not want to be around others on the flight,” Fotieo said.
A note was then put on the bathroom door saying it was out of service, and that was Fotieo’s new seat for the remainder of the flight. CNN contacted Icelandair on Thursday for comment but has yet to hear back.
—PTI

Press Trust of India