Asians are travelling the world, also here in the Northern part of Norway, way above the Arctic circle. It is of course good, but should we be more concerned ?
In the Airbnb- guidelines it is mentioned a point about endemic disease or illness that suddenly affects a region or an entire group of people. It says that "This doesn’t include existing diseases that are associated with an area—for example, malaria in Thailand or dengue fever in Hawaii. Any updates to our policy regarding the outbreak of a disease, and the scope of policy application, will be determined based on announcements by the World Health Organization and local authorities."
On the 26th of January WHO’s assessment of the risk of this event did not change since the last risk assessment conducted on 22 January: The conclusion is that it is very high in China, high at the regional level and high at the global level. Yet for some unknown reason on the 26th of January, WHO advises against the application of any restrictions of international traffic based on the information currently available on this event.
That is a bit hard to understand becauseas we speak there comes in a number of reports from international media, social media and even on this thread Chinese authorities are grossly underreporting the outbreak and that the virus has the ability to spread before people show signs of being contaminated.
We get quite a few visitors from Asia during the winter season in Norway, in particular visitors from China during this period. We have already got the first cancellations due to the outbreak.
Shouldn't we as community expect Airbnb to give us guidelines on how we as hosts should behave and cope? Are Airbnb to passive and too late hiding behind the slow updating from WHO? I haven't seen any official statements from Airbnb yet for our community.. I have today sendt a message to Airbnb about guidlines, but hasn't got any response yet.
Rune, Norway