"We're guilty, we're at fault for leaving. That's it, I'm saying it clearly". Antoine Stefanelli is one of the sixteen French tourists stranded in Costa Rica since 25 January, after having tested positive for Covid-19.
The group, made up of 22 retirees from La Poste and the Orange group aged "between 60 and 77", had left the Lorraine region (eastern France) on 16 January for a ten-day trip to the small Central American country.
In an interview with BFM TV on Friday, Antoine Stefanelli says he is "at the end of his rope", having "sent a distress message to the embassy" to obtain medicines for his wife and having received a simple "e-mail address" in return.
"We are pensioners," he added. We saved up for a year to pay for a nice trip. It was clear that the agency would maintain the trip. The trip was maintained. If you don't want to lose everything, you have to come".
🗨 "Moralement les gens n'en peuvent plus"
— BFMTV (@BFMTV) February 12, 2021
Antoine est l'un des 16 touristes français bloqués au Costa Rica, il témoigne pic.twitter.com/E5mB8wnMQx
Six people are hospitalised, two of them in a serious condition, according to the president of the association that organised the trip and is now calling for help from the French authorities.
Initially six travellers, then a total of twenty tested positive after their scheduled departure on 27 January was postponed due to stricter health standards for entry into the Netherlands, through which they had to transit.
Only two members of the group were able to leave first, followed by four others, via Madrid.
Seven of the tourists were hospitalised, the embassy said. Today there are six, plus the group's Costa Rican guide, Roberto, said one of the group members, Guy Poirot.
Three are in intensive care at the Hospital San Juan de Dios in the Costa Rican capital, two of whom are in a "very serious" condition, he said.
The other three, including Poirot, have seen their state of health improve and have been admitted to a facility for patients with milder symptoms. "I have been told that I will need another 7 to 8 days to be tested negative," a sine qua non condition for returning to France, Poirot commented.
For the ten remaining travellers who tested positive but who did not suffer severe symptoms, they are quarantined in hotels at their own cost: the $2,000 (1,650 euros) for accommodation, covered by the insurance required by Costa Rica to enter the country, has now been exceeded.
Financial loss
In order to encourage the resumption of tourist activity, Costa Rica has not required visitors to take a negative PCR test since October, although they must take out insurance to cover medical and accommodation expenses in the event of contagion.
"The trip had been planned for more than a year" and the pensioners would have lost "between 60 and 70%" of the price of the stay paid to the travel agency Couleurs du Monde if they had given up going, Poirot explained.
"The Moselle (where the travellers come from) is one of the regions most affected (by Covid-19): there is no need to travel to find oneself in this situation," justified the president of the Association.
On social networks, many Internet users questioned the "irresponsibility" of tourists, who have left in the midst of the pandemic. It has not been possible to determine whether they were infected in the country or whether any of them were already carrying the virus before their trip.
After registering just over 1,000 daily cases of Covid-19 in early January, Costa Rica has recorded between 400 and 500 since the second week of February.
(with newswires)
