Coronavirus leaves South Jersey residents stranded in Peru
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Rowan University students are among nearly 2,000 Americans believed to be stranded in Peru as the South American country’s president abruptly closed its borders on Monday, giving tourists just 24 hours to rush for seats on return flights.
Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra has closed borders, implemented strict curfews, business closures and food and water rations. The country is now under martial law to stop the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, according to reports.
More than 70 people from New Jersey indicated in a spreadsheet, publicly shared online, that they are stuck in Peru.
The spreadsheet was created in Google Docs by a woman from Washington, DC who was trying to extract her father and girlfriend from the South American country which now acts as a tool to help any American in need of returning home.
Nearly 2,000 people have signed their names and provided information on the document, its creator and administrator Ainsley Katz told the Courier-Post.
It updates it in real time.
South Jersey residents Kenneth Valinote, his sister Kelisa Valinote, both of Pine Hill, and their relatives were among the names on the list.
The quartet, associated with Williamstown-based Paradise Island Entertainmenttraveled to Peru on March 3 on vacation, according to Valinote’s girlfriend Marie DiLeonardo.
Kenneth Valinote and Marie DiLeonardo, of Williamstown, are students at Rowan University in Glassboro. Kelisa Valinote’s boyfriend Jakub Szczepaniak from Old Bridge is also traveling with the group.
Only two cases of COVID-19 were reported in Peru when the group left the United States.
On Friday, 263 cases of COVID-19 and four deaths were reported by the United States Embassy in Peru.
“I understand they don’t want people to come in, but why aren’t we allowed to go home,” Kelisa Valinote told the Courier-Post of the group’s Airbnb rental in Lima’s Miraflores district.
The offices of Senators Bob Menendez and Cory Booker are aware that New Jersey residents are stranded in Lima, Cusco and other parts of the country, spokespersons for the two lawmakers told The Courier-Post on Friday.
Menendez’s spokesman, Steve Sandberg, said his office didn’t have an exact figure, however.
In a statement, Menendez said he is currently working to return Garden State residents stranded in other countries, including Argentina, Honduras and Morocco, in addition to the “dozens” he estimates are at home. Peru.
“I urged the State Department to do everything in its power to help American citizens abroad return to the United States, including using its authority to arrange commercial charter flights,” he said. said the senator.
“I will do everything I can.”
Through the Courier-Post, Booker’s office reached out to stranded New Jersey residents late Friday afternoon, DiLeonardo confirmed.
Menendez’s office said it was unclear how those returning from Peru with the State Department’s intervention would be subject to additional quarantines. It depends “where they’re from, potential exposure and advice from health experts, but some kind of quarantine, even self-quarantine, is likely,” Sandberg said.
The South Jersey quartet and the entire Peruvian population have already been quarantined since Monday under Peru’s strict new rules, DiLeonardo said.
They cannot go out except to buy groceries. They must walk alone or several meters apart. Emergency vehicles are the only vehicles allowed on the roads. Military officers, wearing surgical masks, enforce the rules by stopping non-emergency vehicles and stopping pedestrians to investigate why they are outside their homes, DiLeonardo described.
“When you walk to the supermarket, the military stops you,” she said.
“If you are in your yard, you can be arrested.”
And for tourists, a language barrier adds to the danger and confusion in interacting with military officers and gathering information about new nationwide quarantine rules, DiLeonardo explained.
Luckily for their group, DiLeonardo is fluent in Spanish.
“To be honest, that’s how the whole world should react,” DiLeonardo said of the Peruvian government’s strategy to contain COVID-19.
The group admitted they felt safer in Peru than at home in South Jersey, where friends on social media make jokes about business closures, curfews, social distancing and self-isolation warrants, DiLeonardo said.
The concern in Peru is how long they will have access to the AirBnB apartment they have rented until March 31; Complicating matters is access to supplies and hostility in their Lima neighborhood toward tourists accused of bringing the virus into the country, DiLeonardo said.
The current focus of the small group is to get any flight to the United States. They would prefer a smaller airport to limit their exposure. Then they would rent a car and drive home to New Jersey, they said.
On Monday, the first day of quarantine, they were in a long line of distraught Americans queuing at the gates of the US Embassy.
Since Peru banned lines to enter grocery stores and the embassy, the group spends a lot of time waiting with the embassy and the US State Department on the phone.
“We feel stuck, like little specks on our Earth, like our government has abandoned us,” DiLeonardo said.
As they wait, they ration food and water, work remotely at their New Jersey job from the rented apartment, and join locals in a nightly 8 p.m. round of applause through the windows of their apartment for military guards on the sidewalks below and other first responders, DiLeonardo describes.
Carly Q. Romalino is from Gloucester County and has been covering South Jersey since 2008. She graduated from Rowan University and is a six-time winner of the New Jersey Press Association Award.
She is the “watchdog” of the Courier Post, diving deep into business throughout the region.
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