Ship passengers disembark, head to quarantine
>>TOKYO: Passengers of the Diamond Princess, a coronavirus-hit cruise ship in Yokohama, who shared cabins with those found infected disembarked yesterday for further monitoring at a public institution until the two-week incubation period ends.
Meanwhile, a teacher in her 60s at a junior high school in Chiba Prefecture, east of Tokyo, tested positive for the pneumonia-causing virus, the prefectural government said, raising speculation the virus may have spread to schools. About 100 passengers of the ship are subject to monitoring at the facility near Tokyo. The cruise ship initially carried 3,700 passengers and crew from 56 countries and regions when it arrived in Yokohama earlier this month. The passengers will stay at the
National Tax College in Wako, Saitama Prefecture, which previously housed 195 people who travelled to Japan on a government-chartered aircraft from the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the centre of the epidemic.
About 970 passengers who have tested negative for the pneumonia-causing virus have already left the cruise ship, while others who were diagnosed with the disease or fell ill have been taken to hospitals in Japan. About 1,000 crew members and 300 passengers, including foreign nationals waiting for their home countries to pick them up by chartered flights and take them home, were on the ship as of Friday. So far, 759 foreigners who were on the ship have left Japan on flights arranged by their home countries. The health ministry is also considering taking the crew off the vessel, though arrangements must be made first with the ship’s operator that employs them.