PLU alum under coronavirus quarantine at university in China is trying to get home
Aside from taking out the trash, Jacob Dominguez-Nelson isn’t allowed to leave his apartment building.
The 24-year-old English teacher has been under COVID-19 quarantine for a month at Jianghan University housing in Wuhan, China — the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak that emerged in mid-December.
“The quarantine policies have gotten increasingly strict,” Dominguez-Nelson told The News Tribune through Facebook messenger this week. “It is at the point where only the building manager is allowed outside every few days.”
To pass the time, Dominguez-Nelson goes to the rooftop of his building to talk with some other foreign teachers. He teaches some online classes. He plays a mobile game similar to League of Legends. He does yoga for exercise and plays piano.
“I’ve been cooking and cleaning and trying to find anything to do to not go crazy,” he said.
Dominguez-Nelson, an English teacher at Jianghan University, is from Minnesota. He studied global studies, music and French at Pacific Lutheran University in Parkland and graduated in 2017. He’s on a year-by-year contract with the university and has been living in Wuhan for a year and a half.
“My contract is up (in) July but I was hoping on renewing it,” he said. “I had plans to travel during spring Festival, but a week before I was scheduled to go out they shut down the whole city without barely (any) warning.”
His plans changed when Wuhan, population of 11 million, fell under a large-scale quarantine in January in response to the outbreak.
To date, more than 2,700 people have died from the virus, with more than 80,000 global cases.
Dominguez-Nelson is still healthy and safe, he said in a Facebook update on Feb. 19.
“My school has gone above and beyond,” Dominguez-Nelson said in the post. “They have provided groceries and food every week.”
Still, things haven’t gotten any easier — public transportation has closed, and a fence was placed around the apartment complex. IDs are checked at the university’s gate.
Dominguez-Nelson is able to connect to his family back home through video messages, but access to Facebook and other social networks is spotty.
“They are worried,” Dominguez-Nelson said. “They are also trying to get me back home.”
The goal is to get repatriated, or flown home, said Dominguez-Nelson, who is an American citizen. More than 300 Americans were repatriated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship quarantine in Japan earlier this month.
The process has been frustrating. Dominguez-Nelson contacted the U.S. Embassy multiple times with few results.
“They replied about two weeks ago about a possible evacuation, but since then they haven’t reached out,” he said.
His sister Neomi Dominguez and friend Sami Biro are working to create a petition “calling on the State Department and the U.S. Embassy in China to do more to assure the safety of Americans in China and to bring them home,” Biro told The News Tribune in an email.
Ideally, the final destination would be Mexico, where most of his family lives.
“For us Americans in Wuhan we don’t know how much longer quarantine is going to go on,” Dominguez-Nelson said. “The situation could get better or worse, but it’s still unknown.
His next effort will be to reach out to representatives in Minnesota.
“I just hope to let people know that there are still Americans in Wuhan and we feel left behind,” he said.
This story was originally published February 27, 2020 at 5:15 AM.
