Ms. Doringo had been sitting at the gate, watching as the crew waited for approval to board the flight and listening as airline employees repeated an announcement about the new travel ban. At 4 p.m., all Filipino passport holders were asked to go to immigration. Around her, domestic workers called their employers in Hong Kong, their voices rising in panic.

Then her suitcase got lost. But there was little else she could do besides huddle together with the other grounded passengers. Most of them had not eaten since that morning. Rather than splurging at the airport’s restaurants, they snacked and skipped dinner.

At 11 p.m., Ms. Doringo left the terminal empty-handed.

She had moved to Hong Kong two years ago with dreams of creating a better life for her family. The job in Hong Kong paid a better salary than what she would have earned back home, and soon after starting she was able to buy a plot of land in her rural province. She began setting aside money every month to build a house for her family.

She missed them constantly, particularly during the chaos of the past seven months when Hong Kong was rocked by antigovernment demonstrations. Her homesickness only intensified in late January as the coronavirus spread.

“Protests, disease, the loneliness of living alone — all of this triggers the longing of going back home,” she wrote in an Instagram post on Jan. 25 before she returned to the Philippines for a nine-day vacation. “To your real home.”