Several more test positive aboard quarantined cruise ship in Japan

BEIJING:Japan on Friday reported 41 new cases of a virus on a quarantined cruise ship and turned away another luxury liner.

Two docked cruise ships with thousands of passengers and crew members remained under 14-day quarantines in Hong Kong and Japan. Before Friday’s 41 confirmed cases, 20 infected passengers were escorted off the Diamond Princess at Yokohama.

About 3,700 people have been confined aboard the ship.

PM Shinzo Abe said that Japan will deny entry of foreign passengers on another cruise ship - Holland America’s cruise ship Westerdam, on its way to Okinawa from Hong Kong - because of suspected virus patients found on board.

Abe said the new immigration policy takes effect on Friday to ensure border control to prevent the disease from entering and spreading further into Japan.

CITIZEN JOURNALIST IN WUHAN GOES MISSING

Over the past couple of weeks, Chinese citizen journalists Chen Qiushi and Fang Bin have served as the world’s eyes and ears inside Wuhan. Now one of them is missing.

Chen has been out of reach for more than 20 hours. Fang, who was silent for much of Friday until a video posted in the evening, was detained briefly by authorities for his video of corpses in a hospital.