Diana Farah Dubai

With the spread of the new coronavirus outbreak affecting countries’ borders and airports, many people are wishing to return to their homes until the COVID-19 pandemic calms down.

This is the case for one UAE-based Japanese family, who plans to fly to Tokyo on a May 15 Emirates EK9440 flight departing from Dubai International airport at 7:35 and arrived at Tokyo Narita International airport earlier than scheduled at 22:15.

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The flight is part of the world’s efforts to repatriate citizens to their respective countries in the coming weeks, which includes the UAE’s Emirates and Etihad airlines’ flights.

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The Japanese family of four plans to return home as they feel the medical situation is safer in Japan.

“I have a respiratory issue myself and I am high risk once I am infected with the virus,” the housewife told Arab News Japan exclusively. She added that they will be returning to the UAE at an unknown date.

“I feel safer in UAE, as long as we live in confinement. However, the number of infected patients in the UAE is still increasing. Although we live in isolation in the residential hotel, there is a chance of infection at any moment because we need to use delivery service and so on,” she said.

The homemaker said she was anxious of taking the flight home, particularly their journey in the airport and aircraft.

“But having seen a decreasing number of positives from PCR screenings at Japan’s airports since the beginning of May, it led us to decide to return home temporarily,” she added.

The family, who has lived in the UAE for one year, will be required to take PCR tests as soon as they land in Japan. They will then stay in a government provided hotel for one to two days until their results come out.

“When the result is clear, we will use the government provided bus to be transferred to the hotel pre-arranged by my husband’s employer. We will be required to self-quarantine in the hotel for 14 days starting from the day we landed in Japan,” she explained.

She said her two children will continue to participate in e-learning activities during the self-quarantine period.

Once they isolate for 14 days in total, they will return to their family home in the Kanto region in Japan.