'Wheels started turning in my brain,' US teacher isolates in bathroom mid-air after testing COVID positive
Jan 01, 2022
Washington [US], January 1 : A US school teacher voluntarily quarantined herself inside the airplane bathroom for a few hours after testing positive for COVID-19.
On her way to Chicago from Iceland on December 20, Michigan school teacher Marisa Fotieo who felt her throat hurting decided to test herself using rapid test kits "and within what felt like two seconds" discovered she was COVID-19 positive.
"I just took my rapid test and I brought it into the bathroom, and within what felt like two seconds there were two lines [indicating a positive test]," Fotieo told NBC News. "There's 150 people on the flight, and my biggest fear was giving it to them," she said.
Fotieo even shared a video on TikTok, from inside the plane bathroom, saying: "POV you test positive for Covid while over the Atlantic Ocean."
In a separate interview with CNN, Fotieo said she took two PCR tests and about five rapid tests, which came back negative. However, about an hour 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 told CNN. "Immediately, it came back positive."
While she was in the tiny cubicle of airplane bathroom, Fotieo was taken care of by the flight crew. "Of course, it's a stress factor when something like this comes up, but that's part of our job," said Ragnhildur Eiriksdottir, the flight attendant Fotieo ran into, helped calm her down.
Fotieo, who is fully vaccinated, tests consistently since she works with an unvaccinated population.
Policies vary among airlines as to how to handle a Covid-positive passenger, according to CNN.
This comes just weeks after the US and other countries have made travel restrictions amid the spread of the Omicron variant of coronavirus. More than 1,400 inbound and outbound flights in the US were cancelled on Friday due to the rising number of COVID-19 cases.
