Viral mobilities and infrastructures of breathing in hotel quarantine, Australia

Breathing in hotel quarantine

The possibilities of breathing together amid shared and unequal vulnerabilities mobilised attention during the early years of the Covid-19 pandemic (Choy, 2020; Nguyen, 2020). In Australia, the first two years of the pandemic intensified ‘atmospheric entanglement and disentanglement’ (Brown, 2017: np) in hotels, re-purposed as places of quarantine from March 2020 to November 2021. Some hotels were luxurious – four or five stars – with ample rooms and facilities; others were repurposed suburban motels, or ad-hoc quarantine or detention facilities (Jerrems et al., 2023; Lobo and Barry, 2023). The experience of those in ‘hotel quarantine’ was therefore uneven, and for many an unpleasant, claustrophobic two-week stay. The visible and invisible infrastructures that provided air-conditioning, ventilation and purified air in these spaces of hospitality designed to provide brief stays and cool comfort, could not always guarantee a mandatory period of ‘safe respiratory existence’ (Amin, 2014; Brown, 2017: np). 

This intervention explores the dis/organisation of intangible contaminated breath as an entity in indoor hotel environments during the pandemic. We argue that existing sociotechnical infrastructures and macropolitical decisions by states that include border closures, enforced containment and health mandates disrupt respiratory co-existence by failing to consider the agency and mobilities of the microscopic SARS-Co-V2 virus. Viral mobilities in closed spaces accelerated in the moment through human and more-than-human encounters which had micropolitical implications for experiences of breathing in quarantine facilities. Literature on ‘the new infrastructural turn’ (Larkin, 2013; Amin, 2014: 138; Berlant, 2016) and ‘micropolitical transformations’ (Bissell, 2016: 394) provide some important insights into this dis/organisation of breath. 

Thinking with cultural geographer David Bissell (2016) who draws on the work of Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, it seems that macropolitical decisions of the state were disrupted by the multiple forces of enablement and constraint at play in encounters and events. These forces produced ‘micropolitical transformations’ or transitions in more-than-human power. Reviewing a large body of anthropological literature on the politics and poetics of infrastructure, Brian Larkin (2013: 329) argues that infrastructures are ‘matter that enable the movement of other matter’ suggesting that quarantine infrastructures can move rather than contain contaminated breath. In other words, infrastructure is a visible and invisible sociotechnical assemblage that brings together the human and nonhuman and ‘binds us to the world in movement’ (Amin, 2014; Berlant, 2016: 394) even during im/mobilities produced during the pandemic.

This note is informed by our empirical work with 10 returning travellers who were quarantined for at least 14-days in high-standard hotels in Australian metropolitan cites such as Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, and Brisbane. Eager to tell their stories of aircraft travel, airport transfers, quarantine, and lockdown, these people of diverse cultural backgrounds[1] with Australian residency rights, participated in in-depth zoom and telephone interviews varying from 30 minutes to 2 hours, during and after hotel quarantine. They shared their daily experiences through diary entries, photographs, videos, Whatsapp messages and hand-drawn sketches. 

We intend this collation of empirical material to sit alongside, as well as advance scholarly insights into the emotional, personal, and creative renderings of pandemic experiences, that try and make sense of a collective, yet isolated, process in uncertain times (Burton, 2021; Choy, 2020; Jensen, 2021; Lobo & Barry, 2023; Pase et al., 2021; Maddrell et al., 2023). The individual participants who we interviewed in Australia provide novel insights into viral mobilities, sociotechnical infrastructures of breathing and respiratory co-existence during the pandemic. These in-depth insights are also inflected by haunting deathscapes popularised by the global media, informal conversations with specialist air-conditioning engineers in Melbourne, as well as our own overseas travel experiences of breathing. While vulnerable as Australian women travellers during this unprecedented crisis, we had taken two vaccinations and a negative PCR test and were therefore also relatively privileged. These mobilities provided a heightened bodily consciousness of differentiated vulnerability, spaces of contagion and the ‘inconvenience of other people’ (Berlant, 2022: 1) in pandemic breathing.

Respiratory coexistence

In Australia, ‘contact tracing’ of SARS-Cov-2 was a part of daily life for residents for the first two years of the pandemic. Extensive testing, tracing, isolating of cases and stringent border control kept Covid case numbers relatively low in Australia. For major cities where we live—Melbourne and Brisbane—contact tracing of Covid mobilities and the mapping of Covid ‘hot spots’ heightened awareness of the governance of air circulation in the virosphere, the intangibility of infected breath and racialized socio-spatial inequalities (Lobo, 2021). Rather than situate respiratory coexistence within the large body of literature on biosecurity, border technologies and the biopolitics of breathing during the pandemic (e.g. Rose-Redwood et al., 2020), we take the risk as women cultural geographers to theoretically wander elsewhere. 

Such wandering is necessary given that Science and Technology scholar and social theorists Maurizio Meloni and Miguel Vatter (2023: 374, 375) argue that there are ‘blind spots’ and ‘dangers’ in understanding the pandemic crises using the lens of biopolitics, that might have ‘outlived its usefulness’, but continues to have the potential to contribute to an ‘intellectual boomerang’. We believe our insights on sociotechnical infrastructures in hotel quarantine provide insights into micropolitical transformations that have outcomes for living with ‘bad’ viruses, that easily pierce membranes of vulnerable bodies, and even cladded public housing in cities of affluent, developed and developing nations.

Organising and distinguishing between ‘good and ‘bad’ circulation of more-than-humans such as plants, animals, microbes and viruses, cultural geographer Jamie Lorimer (2020) explores a large body of scholarship on environmental biopower, biosecurity practices and the spatio-temporal dynamics of governance. Cultural anthropologist Eben Kirksey (2022: np), however, argues that viruses or ‘infectious agents’ have always been nomadic as they jump species or float ‘among cells, bodies and populations’ in the largely unknown and unseen virosphere, an important part of the planetary biosphere. Rather than good or bad, viruses are theorised as pluripotent or always becoming (Brives, 2021; Kirksey, 2022). 

Viruses, as mobile agents, therefore, have a long entanglement with sociotechnical infrastructures that influence human and nonhuman mobility (Keck, 2020). Kirksey (2022) goes on to question German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk’s (2011) thoughts on the agency of nomadic humans with the capacity to create spheres and social bubbles, while animals (and viruses) live in bounded environmental worlds, that no doubt mobilised thinking on closed borders and the governance of hotel quarantine during the pandemic. Science and Technology scholar Nik Brown (2019), however, draws on Sloterdijk’s thinking that focuses on the material fracturing of air, as well as the structuring of breath as it moves through spaces and asks: ‘How are the technics of design and architecture tied into breath, breathing and the obliteration of respiration and life?’

These diverse meditations and questions on involuntary breathing and sociotechnical infrastructures of respiratory coexistence, situate our critical understanding of locked-down quarantine spaces that have broader outcomes for breathing with human and more-than-human others in the Anthropocene. Feminist philosopher Lauren Berlant (2022: 3, 6) reminds us of these ‘pressure[s] of coexistence’ in terms of attachment that draws one out into worlds, and inconvenience that brings exhaustion through ‘adjustments from taking things in’. These are the pressures that dwellers in hotel quarantine experienced over 14 days in Australian cities in 2020 and 2021. The next section explores the organizational technics of breathing in these locked down spaces.

Viral mobilities, breathing and the technics of locked-down spaces

From 20th March 2020, bodies and breath of returning Australian citizens and permanent residents, presumed to be contaminated with the invisible SARS-Cov-2 virus, were swiftly socially isolated and locked down in hotel rooms. This period of waiting in hotels was frustrating and costly for travellers, while national governments secured and managed international/regional/city borders, regulated the spread of the pandemic, and attended to Covid hotspots of infection and death. Although sophisticated technologies and strategies were deployed to fight the ‘enemy’ from the time it arrived at what appeared to be tightly regulated biosecure national borders, pandemic co-breathing heightened atmospheres of anxiety, fear, frustration and exhaustion. Hand sanitisers, surgical masks, gloves, goggles, face shields, protective clothing, exit tunnels at airports, buses for transport to hotels, and contact tracing apps were entangled in the technics of the pandemic military-organizational complex. 

The organizational complex of buildings, spaces, bodies and material practices, could not contain or control involuntary, infected, ambient and intangible breath. The organisation of ‘private respiratory chambers’ (Brown, 2017) or ‘anatmospheres’ in enclosed hotel rooms, that would enable respiration to retreat or withdraw from shared atmospheres, became impossible in collective living. Rather than being sealed, breath was entangled in ways that disassembled hotel buildings (Connor, 2004) during periods of quarantine waiting. Amid this crisis, the perplexing mutating virus was creatively visualised in colourful images, medical research on the virus accelerated, and vaccines as well antiviral drugs were slowly developed to provide ‘immunitary protection’ (Brown and Nettleton, 2017: 505).

Our research with people returning to Australia was, for the most part, prior to their vaccination, as vaccines were still in development, or access to them was still scarce for many. Because of this, attention to air, breath, and breathing, was a common theme of concern, and a realistic threat to those held in quarantine facilities. Breath vaporised in hotel rooms with closed windows. As debates on the causes of quarantine hotel outbreaks in Melbourne (see Jerrems, 2023), one of the most locked-down cities in the world dragged on, days and nights were long for hotel residents held in quarantine. Forced to slow down, they became conscious of the movement of air through the entrance door of the hotel room, the only opening to outside worlds. 

We spoke to several of our participants while they were still in quarantine, and then again afterwards. They spoke of how air moved beneath doors or in and out of hotel corridors when doors were swiftly opened after daily meal drops, as well as during essential health checks. But hotel outbreaks continued, the virus spread rapidly, and it was hard to organise respiratory coexistence. It also became evident that the mobility of air droplets or aerosols in shared atmospheres, were accelerated in milliseconds through the mist from nebulisers, that provided vulnerable bodies in quarantine with life-saving drugs (Oliver, 2021). 

Viral mobilities were accelerated by air-conditioning systems that connected hotel rooms. Figure 1, drawn by a participant to explain air circulation in hotels, shows the technics of air-conditioning systems. This diagrammatic sketch visualises the flow, heating, cooling and filtering of air, that occurs before it enters building zones such as medical laboratories, hospitals, shopping centres, hotels and cinemas.

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Figure 1: Diagrammatic sketch of air-conditioning systems. Source: participant

The diagram, they explained to us, shows the flushing of air-conditioning systems by 100 per cent fresh ‘outside’ air, and the use of primary, secondary, damper and HEPA (High efficiency particulate air) filters, with the capacity to trap the 0.01micron SARS-CoV-2 virus. But since hotels were designed to be places of comfort, rather than clinically safe places of quarantine, ducting and ventilation systems re-circulated returning air. This recirculation of infected air accelerated viral mobilities, disassembled organizational strategies and exposed porous bodies isolated in hotel rooms, yet connected in shared atmospheres or virospheres of respiratory coexistence. 

Another participant was attentive to the ‘risk’ of new air coming in through the crack under the door. They had flown between cities in Australia, with a valid border pass and travel permit, yet caught in an outbreak, and unexpectedly forced into hotel quarantine for 14 days. Although their hotel, a 3.5-star inner-city room with generous space was clean and comfortable, they felt ‘suffocated’ inside. They sketched and photographed their hotel room (Figure 2), as a way to escape the mundanity and boredom.

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Figure 2: Photograph of the hotel room (left); Participant’s sketch of the doorway and entrance to room (right). Source: Participant. 

Their drawings show the cracks, the lines and outlines of the perimeter that contained, yet also revealed cracks and openings and the ‘rattling, noisy’ air conditioner vent; all potentials spaces through which risky air might come in. 

John, a European citizen on a working visa who was quarantined in a luxury hotel in Melbourne in April 2021, spoke of the toxicity of the air that was stifling. He said:

Apparently, it seems that this is an airborne spread virus now. So, I can see that my request for one hour of fresh air is not going to happen. I'm in detention, I cannot see anyone, I cannot breathe fresh air.

Feeling trapped in a spacious room that provided a view of the harbour, John yearned to open the window or stand on the balcony, so he could inhale a breath of ‘fresh air. This experience made him aware of the breathlessness experienced by asylum seekers and prisoners who live in detention for long periods. But he was less aware of the infrastructures of air-conditioning that regulate energy consumption.

To reduce energy consumption in hotels, the input of fresh air in air-conditioned spaces is usually set at 70% per cent rather than 100% as in medical environments; approximately 30% of air flows out as exhaust and the rest is recirculated. Hotel organizational infrastructures, however, lacked proper filtration as well as modules (used in medical research laboratories) to trap the virus, incinerate or dispose it in bio-hazard bags. Therefore, when participants recounted holding their breath in the moments leading up to, and just after, a timed meal drop outside the door, their fears of ‘waiting’ which were often overlooked, were legitimate, given unexpected ‘outbreaks’ within quarantine hotels. Luxurious rooms were spaces of ‘entangled airs’ (Brown, 2017: np), rather than private spaces for easy breathing in 5-star city hotels.

Pamphlets and health guidance was provided to those in quarantine by health advisors, which included exercises like yoga, stretching, and meditation. These relaxation and breathing techniques, for how to ‘survive’ their 14-day quarantine provided another form of breathing practice, aimed at strengthening their mental and physical health. For one participant, however, this only ‘put more attention on the air’ that they were breathing in. Claimed as the ‘gold standard’ of quarantine by the Australian government, a phrase that was repeated over and over whenever an outbreak occurred in hotels, a government inquiry found damning evidence of the unfit-for-purpose design of hotels (Victorian Government, 2020) used as prevention or isolation from an airborne virus. 

Participants in hotel quarantine knew of the mobility of the virus, and the ease by which transmission and infection could occur. As the pandemic wore on into a second year, participants developed a heightened awareness of the inadequate air ventilation as well as the preventative measures that their stock-standard (and sometimes five-star, if one was lucky in the randomised allocation of quarantine locations) hotel rooms provided. Several participants wondered about air-conditioning vents that ‘leaked’ untreated and unfiltered air into the room. Every time a delivery of a meal, medication, or other supplies or testing was delivered to their doors, the opening movement would push their stale air out, and pull new air in – leaking potentially ‘risky’ air, as one participant explained, into their room. Isolation, in this sense, was never quite achievable. It was impossible to live for such a long time—14 days or more—without exposing one’s breath to potential contaminants. These viral mobilities as well as hotels as ‘just-in-time infrastructure[s]’ (Jerrems, 2023: 27) compounded their isolation and unease. 

Building respiratory publics

Hotel spaces of quarantine push us to think conceptually and methodologically about the challenges of building ‘respiratory publics’ (Nguyen, 2020: 441). Focusing on the polluted city of Beijing, China, Victoria Nguyen (2020: 439) uses the concept of respiratory publics to think about ‘new solidarities’ and ‘entwined fates’ that can unsettle toxic atmospheric futures. Many participants in our study recognised these entwined fates during the pandemic produced by viral mobilities and leaky infrastructures that failed to provide a safe breathing space – atmospheres of anger, anxiety, frustration and trauma co-existed. Although vulnerable to ‘atmospheric subjection’ (Choy, 2020: 236), it was the food provided, the material environment and socio-technical infrastructures of hotel rooms fitted with television screens and wifi, that also provided opportunities for strangers to renew or form new and emerging respiratory publics. 

The increased vitality of computers and mobile phones made more comfortable breathing possible in stifling atmospheres. Also, while forced proximity with hotel staff, medical staff and hotel guests produced atmospheres of disconnection, there were also opportunities for connection. It was undoubtedly much easier to co-breathe at a distance with friends and family, who were also socially isolating in cities in Australia and overseas. Therefore, while waiting in quarantine produced space-time compression in ‘personal respiratory chambers’ (Brown, 2017: np), there were also opportunities for decompression from long days and busy working lives. Participants in hotel quarantine, as well as those socially isolating at home, were therefore more amenable to engaging in initial/follow-up zoom meetings, longer interviews than requested, maintaining detailed diary entries as well as sharing messages, sketches and on-site photographs via whatsapp. Space-time extension during the Covid-19 pandemic as noted by Bissell (2021), as well as the ‘multiple intensities of Covid-19 space-times’ highlighted by Maddrell et al., (2023: 1) produced ‘multiple intersectional burdens’, but also unexpected solidarities of co-breathing in shared atmospheres. 

This article has highlighted the complexity of collective pandemic ‘waiting’ and breathing that was uncomfortable and uneasy in hotel infrastructures. But we would also like to acknowledge the privilege that participants experienced: the ability to cross a closed border to return to Australia, and isolation in relatively comfortable, and sometimes luxurious hotels that were part of the quarantine system (Lobo and Barry, 2023). Although a cost was involved (which could be appealed or waived for some people), the relief of return to their country of residence was a privilege that many others in the pandemic were unable to attain, let alone dream about. Geographers and social science scholars have written about the violence of ‘waiting’ and ‘impossibility of social distancing’ that plays out for publics who are displaced or do not have the correct passport, visa, or granted asylum claim (Ozguc, 2021; Hagan 2022; Moawad and Andres, 2022). 

Unlike many others who were detained and isolated, for fear of the virus, and in-line with the violent border practices of nations such as Australia (see Ubayasiri 2021), the ‘wait’ for escape, for fresh air, that returning travellers thrown into Australia’s hotel quarantine system experienced, was a type of reconcilable discomfort. Though rendered immobile for a two-week period, this dispensation to be in hotel quarantine is not something to be taken for granted and is in contrast, to many other experiences of forceful movement during the pandemic (Hirsch 2021). For our participants, although these 14-days were enduring, they were freed at the end of their quarantine period, released back into society in a relatively healthy, stable state. Reunited with family and friends, the hardship and breathlessness of mandatory hotel quarantine was now beyond them. Or, perhaps like participant John, they have experienced what it is like to be breathless in detention. This breathlessness might push thoughts on crises that are ‘meaningful only if they produce movements, change and dynamism’ as well as multiscalar thinking (Meloni and Vatter, 2023: 368, 383).  This note that focuses on micropolitical events and sociotechnical infrastructures of hotel quarantine in Melbourne attempts to initiate such movements in thought on the dis/organization of intangible breath.

acknowledgements

We would like the thank the participants who shared their photographs, videos, sketches and stories. This paper was presented at the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) Conference, Toronto, 6-9 October 2021. Speical thanks to the conference session organisers and editors of this issue, in particular, Lisa Wiedemann.
 

[1]       All the participants had been granted ‘travel exemptions’ by the Australian Government, meaning that they had been approved for essential travel purposes and had residency or citizenship rights. The Australian international border was closed – even to most citizens and residents – for almost two years while mandatory hotel quarantine was in place. Mandatory quarantine for international arrivals was slowly dissolved between November 2021 to March 2022.