Peruvian President Martín Vizcarra announced the border closings and military-enforced curfew days before Michelle Schinaia was supposed to return to the United States. 

Vizcarra declared a state of emergency March 15, instituting a 15-day quarantine and restricting international travel due to the coronavirus pandemic. Schinaia, a freshman neuroscience and psychology major at Syracuse University, hasn’t been able to leave the country since. 

The state of emergency, now extended to April 12, has left thousands of Americans stranded and searching for flights home. 

“We’ve been trying to get in contact with the U.S. Embassy here and trying to find flights,” Schinaia said. “But as soon as we get those flights they’re canceled, so there’s no way for us to leave.”

When Schinaia and her family arrived in Peru on March 8, the country had then confirmed 6 cases of the novel coronavirus. The novel coronavirus causes COVID-19, a respiratory disease that has infected 618,000 people and killed 28,800 globally.

Peru has since confirmed 580 cases of the virus as of Friday, and 9 deaths. Now under quarantine, Schinaia and her family have remained at their grandparents’ house in Lima.

“There’s not a lot of people in the streets, just military officers. We’ve gone to the grocery store a few times, and a lot of people have been wearing masks,” Schinaia said. “We’re only allowed to stay three meters away from each other, so we’re all very distant.”

The U.S. Embassy in Peru announced Friday that two flights would depart that day from Lima, and one would take off from Cusco. The embassy directed those it had contacted Thursday night to travel to a meeting point to board the flights.

Schinaia has received emails from the embassy about transportation out of Peru, she said Friday in a message to The Daily Orange. One email she received stated the embassy would contact her as soon as a flight was confirmed. 

Securing a spot on a plane costs between $1,000 and $2,000 per person, Schinaia said. The fee would be reimbursed upon their arrival in the U.S., she said.

“My family and I cannot get on any of those flights because of the flight costs,” Schinaia said. “We don’t have that money to begin with so we wouldn’t be able to afford it.”

Schinaia and her family are now trying to find alternatives to the embassy flights. If they stay until April 12, the flights that become available once the borders open may also be expensive due to demand, she said.

The situation in Peru feels both similar and different to what’s happening in the U.S., Schinaia said. While the Peruvian military is enforcing the quarantine, people in the U.S. are self-isolating. People in Peru are also taking precautions.

“We can only buy a certain amount of water bottles per person at the grocery store so they don’t run out,” Schinaia said. “I wouldn’t say that they’re going crazy about it but we are low on resources.”

Running out of needed medication was a concern for Mary Cappotto Boyle, an SU alumna from the Class of 1986. Cappotto Boyle landed in Peru on March 14 with her husband and 15-year-old son. She and her family were able to return to the U.S. on Wednesday night.

The family began their spring break vacation staying at a lodge in the Amazon rainforest. The three were told on March 16 they would have to leave Peru by midnight. 

“We hurriedly packed up, got on a boat back to Puerto Maldonado, hoping to get a flight into Lima so that we could get back to the U.S.,” Cappotto Boyle said Sunday. “(Airport officials and police) wouldn’t even let us back in the airport.”

The family was eventually able to fly to Cusco and stay at a hotel. There was enough food and water at the hotel, but Cappotto Boyle was rationing her prescription medicine. 

Cappotto Boyle has a hereditary metabolic disorder that causes severe arthritis and liver disease. She also has fibromyalgia. 

“I suffer a lot with pain and other problems related to my liver. So I am dependent on prescriptions and I’m running out of those,” she said. “I’ve been kind of trying to spread them out, I’ve got about six days.”

The family struggled with communication from the U.S. Department of State, Cappotto Boyle said. They spent six days in the dark before first hearing Sunday that the department was working to bring Americans home, she said. 

“The federal response was really slow and anemic,” Cappotto Boyle said.

Cappotto Boyle estimated that about 100 Americans were in the hotel with her. One was Johanna Gordon, who came to the hotel with her husband and two children on March 16. 

Gordon and her family initially wondered if they’d remain in Peru until May, she said Monday. But she said some people, including embassy personnel and those with medical conditions, had been able to leave the country in recent days.

“We have this hope now that we might be out of here in about 48 hours, but again it could be next week sometime,” Gordon said.

The Gordons returned home to Ohio on Friday afternoon, she said in a text message. The U.S. embassy contacted the family Wednesday night, and the four landed in Miami around 10:45 p.m. Thursday. 

She’s relieved, she said, but hopes her new friends will be able to get home soon. 

Cappotto Boyle’s husband woke her up at 4 a.m. Wednesday after receiving an email from the U.S. Embassy stating the family had to be at the airport by 8:30 a.m. 

The family boarded their first flight at noon Wednesday after going through various checkpoints with health professionals, the Peruvian government and the airline. They all returned to the U.S. at around 10 p.m.

“If my husband hadn’t woke up at 4 a.m. we would’ve missed the flight,” Cappotto Boyle said.

While they wait for a flight home, Schinaia and her siblings have been working on homework. The transition to online classes at SU has been difficult for Schinaia, she said, because she didn’t bring notebooks or her computer to Peru. 

Though her internet is slow, she’s been using her phone to contact professors and submit assignments through the Blackboard app. Her professors have been lenient about turning in assignments.

Cappotto Boyle and her family are starting to process everything now that they’re home. She’s called the pharmacy about her medications, and she and her husband had their first good night’s sleep in a long time, she said. 

“I don’t think we were really attuned to the level of stress that we were feeling,” Cappotto Boyle said. “We were so focused on the job that we had to do, which is: get out.”

Published on March 28, 2020 at 11:13 am

Contact Emma: esfolts@syr.edu