he D’Silva family rushed from the hospital to the taxi and straight to the airport. They feared that at any moment the phone would ring and some official would say they couldn’t board the flight back to Australia. As they stepped out of the car at the terminal, Suzanne D’Silva felt something odd: the cold. Despite having been in Japan for nearly a month, this was the first time she had felt the fresh air. “It was an unbelievable experience feeling that cold air on your face,” she says. “We just stood there and breathed it in for a bit. On the ship, we were locked in for seven days … In the hospital, again, all the windows and doors were sealed.” The D’Silvas were diagnosed with coronavirus on the now infamous Diamond Princess cruise ship. Their time fighting the illness in Japan was terrifying and tiring. When the ship docked in Yokohama on 3 February, passengers were told there was a Covid-19 case onboard but Suzanne’s mind was more occupied with plans to take her kids to Tokyo Disneyland. No one was too worried. But then disembarkation was delayed. First by hours, then days. Suddenly they were shut in their cabins, unable to leave, and Suzanne had a strange tickle in her throat that wouldn’t go away. “I just knew we were going to get sick … the food that they were serving was not even covered. I said to my husband, ‘I’m telling you right now we are going to get this virus.’” To keep herself sane, she typed out updates for family and friends. 9 February 2020: For the last three days, the kids and I have woken up crying every morning. We are struggling to keep it together and haven’t had a proper night’s sleep since we got given the news of the quarantine. We are all constantly coughing and sneezing and have ongoing headaches. The next day her 20-year-old daughter, Bianca, tested positive for Covid-19. The next thing they knew, the family was sitting in plastic-covered wheelchairs being taken off the ship through a blue plastic tunnel. “We didn’t realise how serious this thing was until we actually saw the hazmat suits… We were in shock,” she says. In the middle of the night they were taken by ambulance to a hospital several hours away. When they arrived Suzanne and her husband, Dellone, both tested positive too. Their teenage son, Brenton, had somehow avoided the virus and was isolated in a separate room. Suzanne and Dellone were sent for lung scans. “I had pneumonia but in smaller patches, my husband had larger patches even though he hadn’t shown any sign of illness,” Suzanne says. “Within a day or so he had this really high temperature and a lot of difficulty breathing.” Bianca simply had a cough and a headache, Suzanne’s symptoms were flu-like and she was short of breath, but Dellone’s condition was rapidly deteriorating. “At one point his oxygen levels dropped pretty low and his [blood] pressure [was] very high … I could see in his face that he was panicking because he couldn’t breathe.” Eventually, Dellone got his breath back, Bianca’s headaches stopped and, on 26 February, everyone in the family tested negative. The moment the Australian consulate cleared them for travel, they booked tickets on their phones and got in a cab. But the Australia they landed in still had no idea about the devastation the virus would bring. “When we got off at the airport, there were no temperature checks, there was nothing, absolutely nothing,” Suzanne says. “There was a lady who was sick on the plane, very sick … she had a mask and the crew members quickly put on masks and they asked for a doctor on the plane … But then they got off. She just walked off with us.” “I was really upset, actually – Australia is seeing this all on the news and they are not taking it seriously.” The doctors in Japan told them they would be immune for at least a few months but Suzanne can’t shake the fear of getting Covid-19 again or giving it to others. “You just don’t know if you can get it … You just don’t know if that virus is still within us somewhere and you can cause it to [spread to others].” Those weeks were tough but then the country went from no one caring about Covid-19, to caring about nothing else. “It’s all around you at the moment, there is no relief, it’s on the news … you try and push it out, and the minute you put the TV on, it’s cruise ships.” When the D’Silvas were taken off the ship they could only take a small bag each. In the last week of March, the rest of their luggage was finally delivered to their door with strict instructions for how to wash the clothes inside. “We were a bit emotional about it,” Suzanne says. “We didn’t want to be reminded.” She put the clothes in the washing machine and hung them out in the sun. “You just try to put it behind you and keep trying to live as normal as possible. I think it will take a little bit of time.”