Coron-abroad:
exchanges cut short
Quintfus Kwong
Because of COVID-19’s rapid spread from China across the world, many students have had to cut their exchanges short – only three months into their program.
“I am sad about leaving here but it is inevitable I guess,” said Ryan Li, a year three student who went to Denmark for his exchange.
During his exchange, he had a final project that involved travelling to the Faroe Islands to do a news story piece, but that was cancelled when the virus hit the rest of Europe.
“I was looking forward to the final project the most...but turns out travelling is banned everywhere now,” Ryan added.
But the decision to return wasn’t just because of the suspension of Universities worldwide, but also the escalating situation in Europe which saw a surge of coronavirus infections, forcing many students to make the tough decision of leaving the country.
“Didn't expect Europe to be so bad until I was in Germany when Italy was the epicenter and saw absolutely zero precautions despite having about 1000 cases at the time,” Harvey said, another year 3 student who went to Europe.
On return, students had to quarantine themselves for 14-days under government policy; some students were even reported to have contracted the virus. A number of students under quarantine were reportedly staying at Hotel Jen, who disclosed that they were hosting students returning from China.
But this policy caused much controversy in February when the Hotel Employee’s union complained that they were not provided information as to which guests were subject to quarantine. Some hotels even refused to host returning students for quarantine.
HKU has also rolled out its own relief measures for students returning from exchange, such as providing accommodation at hotels and subsidies for meals – but management met criticism when some students reported that they were unable to reach the International Affairs Office (IAO) whose staff has had to work home.
HKU has also suspended all outbound exchange programs to the mainland.