TOURINFO-REPAT ARMENIA- JULY 18, 2020- My family and I just flew back to Armenia after several months in the US. As might be expected, we were apprehensive about boarding a plane, especially a transcontinental flight, in the era of Covid-19 – our first flight since February. The Iceland Air charter flight from LAX to EVN, with a brief fueling stop in Reykjavik, was fairly uneventful, despite being stuck in a confined space with over 250 Armenians with different attitudes towards proper mask-wearing and social distancing.
At the same time, we were positively surprised by the entire process of entering Armenia. As we were approaching the border control area, we passed under a modern “passive” temperature-sensing machine that could detect anyone with fever without hindering the smooth flow of passengers. As soon as we came down the escalators, we passed a set of tables where we were kindly asked to dispose of our personal masks in exchange for brand-new surgical masks, and then directed, two at a time, toward several tables where we signed a special document agreeing to the terms of entry under the Covid-19 emergency regime still in force in the country. These include a mandatory 14-day self-quarantine, and our consent to be monitored by various authorities to make sure that we adhere to this quarantine. We were each asked to provide our address in Yerevan and a contact number. Following passport control (which collected these signed agreements), we had an unusually long wait for our luggage (Zvartnots Airport is equipped to handle luggage loading and unloading for smaller planes such as Airbus 319/20/21 and Boing 737s, and we had arrived on a 767). Nevertheless, we were happy to get home after a 16-hour journey with all of our luggage in tow.
The day after we arrived, we each received a call by the emergency situation warden’s office. A very polite young woman informed each of us that the call was being recorded, and asked us the same set of questions: Please confirm your name and age, and the address where you are self-quarantining; who are the other persons in the same address (name and age of each)?; do you understand the terms of your entry, including the requirement for 14-day quarantine?; how are you feeling?; and finally, do you have any issues getting food or meals? She then asked me if I had a smartphone, which I do. She sent me a text with a link to both Android and iOS versions of a special quarantine-tracking app for Armenia and asked me to download and launch the app while we were still on the phone. Once the app loaded, I gave her the unique code assigned to me, which resulted in my name (in Armenian) appearing in the app. She then asked me to take a selfie-photo via the app, which now becomes part of my electronic record. I’m now supposed to keep this app on, and the phone with me at all times (the app, as one might imagine, does track location) during the 13 remaining days of quarantine. She also listed the consequences of “breaking” quarantine by leaving the house, which ranges from being moved to a government-run quarantine facility, fines, and possibly other administrative actions. Finally, she informed me that I might be receiving calls from the Ministry of Health, our local “Polyclinic”, and the police, who will all be checking on our health and safety. I should mention that even though the topic is quite serious, she was respectful, kind, and polite throughout the call.
Some people might react to the above with a sense of “how dare a government uses such strict measures to track incoming passengers”, and “what happened to individual privacy and freedom of movement.” Our family’s collective reaction was very different – we were very pleased by the professional, efficient and respectful demeanor of everyone we interacted with throughout the process, and would much rather submit to this type of thorough contact-tracing for a short period than face the prospect of a super-carrier infecting large numbers of people. Overall, a very good experience, and one that other, supposedly much more advanced/sophisticated nations could learn from. Great job, Armenia!
