Health Canada checks on traveller at home when he's still in quarantine hotel

The federal government needs to get organized when it comes to tracking travellers forced to stay in quarantine hotels, according to a Gatineau, Que., man who says a Health Canada worker went to his home to check on him when he was still held in a hotel.

David Nhabetse landed in Canada Monday evening after travelling to visit family in Mozambique and he says he took a PCR test at the Montreal airport before he was taken to a nearby hotel to await results.

He received his negative test about 24 hours later and was told he could leave the hotel Wednesday night, but chose to drive back Thursday morning to avoid travelling at night.

Visit from Health Canada

Nhabetse said a Health Canada employee knocked on his door in Gatineau before he had received his official release order at the hotel.

He said thankfully his wife was home at the time and answered the door.

"It was strange. My way of looking at the whole thing, the whole process, it looks like nobody knows who is running what, so it's like everybody does whatever they do, but I'm not too sure if they co-ordinate," Nhabetse said.

This summer, the government dropped the hotel quarantine requirement for incoming air travellers, but recently reinstated some measures as part of its attempt to contain the emerging omicron variant.

Now, all Canadian citizens and permanent residents returning from a list of 10 countries under the new restrictions — all of them in Africa — must quarantine at a hotel while they await test results, and then quarantine at home for a total of 14-days.

Incomplete records for quarantine hotels

Last week, federal auditor general Karen Hogan tabled a report in the House of Commons that examined the enforcement of quarantine hotel stays and testing requirements from July 1, 2020 to the end of June 2021.

The report found the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) only had records to verify hotel stays for about a quarter of air travellers for the period of February to June 2021.

Nhabetse said given his experience, the report from the auditor general does not surprise him.

"I wasn't alone on this boat. There were many people frustrated actually arriving home here ... I was feeling like I'm on a foreign land while I was coming home," he said.

'Like breaking out of jail'

Sarah Shoucri of Montreal, who stayed at the same quarantine hotel in Montreal, said travellers were forced to wait nearly 10 hours for food on the first night and by the end of her stay, she was left in tears.

Shoucri, who was returning from a month-long trip to visit her partner in Nigeria, said even though she received her negative test results on Tuesday afternoon, she wasn't able to leave the hotel for another 31 hours.

She was never formally discharged from the hotel because Red Cross staff mistakenly gave her quarantine release order to the guest staying in the room next door, Shoucri said.

Shoucri said it was lucky she had exchanged phone numbers with that guest and was quickly told of the mix-up.

After trying to get answers from public health and Red Cross employees at the hotel, Shoucri said she called a lawyer and decided to walk out of the hotel on her own.

"My gut instinct told me, if you want to leave, it has to be now. And if you don't leave, it's going to take days for them to figure it out," she said.

Shoucri, who didn't have access to her luggage, walked outside of the hotel in winter temperatures without a coat and headed for a taxi, calling the process traumatic.

"It was like I was breaking out of jail and I couldn't even talk. ... Until the cab reached the highway, it was even hard for me to talk," Shoucri said.

CBC asked the Public Health Agency of Canada to explain the process of being given a quarantine release order, but did not get a response before publication.

On Monday, a spokesperson with PHAC said in a written statement it could not comment on specific cases for privacy reasons, but acknowledged there were some delays in service at designated quarantine facilities.

PHAC said the delays were experienced at airports with a higher volume of travellers and the government is "working diligently to address these issues."

"The timing for the release of the quarantine facility depends on the volume of travellers at each airport and timing of testing results," the statement said.