The coronavirus has killed 213 people. As of yesterday, it’s a global emergency. Hundreds have been quarantined on return from China, including this American football player – however, some fans are a little too concerned about him.
Jarred Evans, originally from New York, has spent some time recently in Wuhan playing for the Wuhan Bersekers. However, he was one of around 200 US citizens flown out of the country earlier this week via a state department evacuation.
Currently he’s being held in March Air Base in Riverside, California – and apparently, some women have said they wish they were ‘quarantined with him’.
Check out the news report about Evans’ time at the air base below:
Evans told the MailOnline that while he’s not been tested positive for the virus, medics at the base are keen for people to stick around for observation just to be sure. ‘It’s being taken very seriously but it’s also relaxed… we talk to each other outside,’ he explained.
The football player was training in China in December, in preparation for his next season in Switzerland, when the new strain of coronavirus broke out in Wuhan.
Explaining the sudden panic around the virus, Evans said:
I didn’t speak Chinese but my friends were like ‘be careful’. Three days later my friend said: ‘Go to the store now with a face mask and gloves and get as much as you can. They’re going to shut down the city.’ I took it as a joke. [I thought], I’m from New York which is a city of seven million people. In Wuhan there are 11 million.
I’m thinking, they’re not going to shut down an entire city, but sure enough they did. It turned into a frenzy. People were fighting over masks, fighting over food. There were lines out the doors of stores. The shelves were empty.
In preparation for ‘surviving this for two or three weeks, a month in my home’, he stocked up – getting 10 gallons of water and bacon, chicken, eggs, rice and noodles. He also paid his gas and electricity bills in advance, to ensure healthy living in his apartment.
Thankfully, he was soon told a US plane would be on its way to take people home – however, he was one of the lucky ones to get a seat.
Evans explained:
One of the rules we weren’t to share on social media. I heard and saw a couple people weren’t allowed into the airport – you’re not on the list, you gotta go. As a US citizen, seeing other US citizens not able to go home to their families… if I was in that situation, I wouldn’t know what to do.
I would have been hurt. My heart and my prayers not only the US citizens there but the Chinese friends I have because this is scary.
During the course of the flight, medics in hazmat suits reportedly checked passengers’ temperatures at least 15 times. After arriving back in the US, people on the plane were assigned rooms at the base.
Talking about the messages he’s been receiving since being quarantined, Evans said:
Holy moly…. I have a lot of followers anyway but these people are different now. There’s definitely an increase. I got a message this morning where the girl said: ‘I just saw you on the news. I would definitely want to be quarantined with you!’ A lot of people have just pretty much given me their best wishes, saying they’re glad I am home.
However, he hasn’t been deterred from the country. ‘[China is] a beautiful place – I love the people there and the culture. It’s getting a bad name right now but it’s beautiful,’ Evans said.
Across the world, there have been 9,934 confirmed coronavirus cases, with two confirmed in the UK.
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.