Travelers on a scuba diving trip from Massachusetts to Honduras woke up to alarming notes slipped under their hotel room doors Monday morning.

The Central American country was closing its borders to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Days later, the group of 16 travelers still doesn’t know how or when they’ll get home.

“People have gone into panic mode,” Tara Lavelle told the Herald.

Lavelle was one of 16 Bay Staters who embarked on what was supposed to be a weeklong trip with Brookline-based East Coast Divers on Saturday. At that time, Honduras had only reported two cases of COVID-19.

“Hindsight is 20/20,” Lavelle said, lamenting the decision to travel last week. “I was obviously concerned, but the trip was still on. We said we’ll go, and if anything happens in the U.S., we’ll be able to get back home.”

But the Honduran government announced it was closing its borders on Sunday, March 15, for seven days to slow the spread of the virus.

The divers are now trapped in a hotel in Roatan, Honduras. The group immediately got on the phone with the U.S. embassy and commercial airlines, Lavelle said, to no avail.

As they struggled to secure a flight, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo began urging Americans abroad to return home, saying in a White House press conference Friday that, “In countries where commercial departure options remain available, U.S. citizens who reside in the United States should arrange for immediate return to the United States unless they’re prepared to remain abroad for an extended time.”

Government-chartered flights also began Friday to bring U.S. citizens stranded in Morocco home.

But the scuba group received a statement Friday morning from the embassy in Honduras that stated, “while the U.S. government has successfully evacuated hundreds of our citizens in previous crises, these flights do not reflect our standard practice and should not be relied upon as an option for U.S. citizens abroad who may be impacted by the ongoing spread of COVID-19. U.S. citizens should make plans using commercial travel options.”

“I was shocked,” Lavelle said. “I figured there would be at least a back-and-forth communication with them.”

The scuba group’s original flights were all canceled and their attempts to make subsequent travel plans continue to fall through. Lavelle said she’s booked on two different flights next week, but doesn’t know whether those will get out. In the meantime, the group is being charged $175 a night to stay in their rooms at the Turquoise Bay Resort. The tour includes one elderly resident who has a limited supply of essential medication, Lavell said.

The travelers at one point had banded together with more than 100 other Americans stuck in the country to charter a plane home, at a price of $1,000 a person, they said. Back in Brookline, East Coast Divers co-owner Nick Fazah said his company fronted $16,000 to get the group on the plane, but he got word late Thursday night a local permitting issue barred the flight.

“It’s a nightmare. I haven’t slept in days,” Fazah told the Herald.

Pompeo said Friday a repatriation task force has been set up in the State Department “working each of these instances that we’ve heard from individual members of Congress” of stranded Americans, urging travelers abroad to log onto the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program to receive alerts and other information.

“We’re trying to get Americans back from these places where air travel has been disrupted,” Pompeo said. “We’ll get that done over time. We’ll get it done successfully.”

Friday afternoon, travelers got word that three commercial airlines would be sending planes down to Honduras, but Lavell said she won’t be relieved until she’s on American soil.

“We decided none of these commercial airlines were reliable,” she said.