Guests at Hong Kong quarantine hotel party on eve of their release

May 8, 2009, 3:18 GMT

   Hong Kong - It has been a long week for the guests quarantined at Hong Kong's Metropark Hotel. Locked in he hotel, with basic food, no room or laundry service and the threat of swine flu looming over their heads.

   It's no surprise that tempers have flared at Metropark, the hotel where Hong Kong's fist swine flu patient stayed briefly and 240 guests and 100 staff have been quarantined for the last seven days.

   But at the eve of their release on Friday, the guests put the long week behind them and celebrated their impending freedom by tearing down the white sheets which had covered the lobby windows and protected the hotel from the prying lenses of photographers, and partied in style.

   In video footage posted on internet video-sharing site YouTube, guests without face masks are seen partying, raising glasses, dancing and laughing while sober-looking policemen in masks watch.

   Even a disgruntled Jimmy Hong, South Korean businessman, who became famous for his rant on radio and on YouTube, threatening hotel staff and government workers over the possible loss of a multi-billion dollar contract, was in good form, passing out drinks and dancing with a tall, attractive blonde woman.

   The partying guests' high spirits are in stark contrast to earlier postings which, along with Hong's rant, show the conditions they were forced to accept and the drudgery of their daily routines.

   With the hotel off limits to the press, blogs and YouTube have provided the outside world with the only real insight of their life under quarantine.

   One posting early this week shows the scarce breakfast buffet, another describes how a guest does his own laundry, and one shows the content of the gift bag of souvenirs given to them as an apology from the Hong Kong government.

   The pack contained a 'Hong Kong, Live It, Love It' bag, a polo shirt with a Hong Kong logo, some cuddly toys, money-off vouchers for restaurants and tickets to amusement parks such as Ocean Park and Disneyland.

   All the guests and staff are due to be released Friday evening after undergoing a final health check.

   One of them, a businessman speaking by phone, said: 'I expect there will be a few guests feeling a bit worse for wear today when we're given the health check. Thankfully it will be due to the vast quantities of wine they put away last night and not the swine flu.'

   After their release, the guests are given the option of either heading straight to the airport or two free nights at another hotel paid for by Hong Kong's government.

   A group of 32 travellers on the same flight into Hong Kong as the swine flu-infected Mexican tourist plus two taxi drivers who drove him around the city were released Thursday.

   Of those, 14 went straight to the airport while a another group took advantage of the offer and stayed.

   The 25-year-old Mexican man at the centre of the scare has recovered from the infection but is still under quarantine in hospital.

   The Hong Kong government took the radical step of rounding up all the people who may have been in contact with him and sealing off the hotel on May 1 in a bid to stop the virus from spreading.

   So far, no other cases have been detected, and all tests for the H1N1 virus among guests, staff and fellow passengers have come back negative.

   The action was criticized by public-health experts as an overreaction, especially as the threat of a global pandemic appears to be ebbing.

   Hong Kong was criticized for failing to act quickly in the early days of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003.

   Nearly 300 people died and around 1,800 were infected when SARS spread to Hong Kong from southern China through an infected patient who stayed in a city hotel.