Cruise ship passengers may head to S.A.
San Antonio officials were informed Saturday night that an unknown number of passengers from the Grand Princess cruise ship, where at least 21 people are infected with the new coronavirus, are headed to Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland for quarantine, Hearst Newspapers has learned.
According to a source close to the situation, city officials were told in a call with the U.S. Health and Human Services Department about plans to send asymptomatic passengers from the ship, which has been held off the coast of California as federal officials grappled with what to do with the thousands of people aboard.
It appeared that many of the evacuees could be from Texas or from surrounding states.
The cruise liner is owned by Princess Cruises, which also operates the Diamond Princess, where a large cluster of coronavirus cases surfaced as the ship was docked in Japan. When more than 300 Americans were evacuated from the ship, 144 were brought to Lackland for a two-week quarantine. As of Friday, six evacuees remained in extended quarantine there, after coming into close contact with people who later were found to be infected with the virus.
The base previously hosted 91 evacuees from Wuhan, China.
At least one former passenger of the Grand Princess, a California man, has died of the virus, health officials there have said.
Cruise officials and passengers confined to their rooms on the ship circling international waters off the San Francisco Bay Area voiced mounting frustration as the weekend wore on without direction from authorities on where to go.
The Grand Princess was forbidden to dock in San Francisco amid evidence that the vessel had been the breeding ground for a cluster of 21 cases — and possibly growing — that resulted in at least one death after its previous voyage. The ship is carrying 3,500 people from 54 countries with a large chunk of its more than 2,000 U.S. passengers from California.
Jan Swartz, group president of Princess Cruises and Carnival Australia, said in a briefing with reporters Saturday that they want guests and crew off the ship as soon as possible, but decisions on where to dock and how to test them are out of their hands.
“From where we sit, there are many different authorities involved in the decision and we are awaiting that decision,” she said. “So we are hopeful that decision will be made quickly so our guests and team can be cared for.”
Meanwhile, Florida reported two coronavirus deaths — the first in the U.S. outside the West Coast. Health officials said the people in their 70s died in Santa Rosa County in Florida’s Panhandle and in the Fort Myers area after traveling overseas. Florida also raised the number of people who have tested positive for COVID-19 — the disease caused by the coronavirus — from four to seven.
The U.S. death toll from the virus climbed to 19, with all but three of the victims in Washington state. The number of infections swelled to more than 400, scattered across about half of the U.S. states. Pennsylvania, Indiana, Minnesota and Nebraska reported their first cases.
In California, state authorities were working with federal officials to bring the Grand Princess cruise ship to a non-commercial port over the weekend and test the people aboard for the virus. There has been no word on where the vessel will dock.
Vice President Mike Pence said at a Saturday meeting with cruise line executives in Florida that officials were still working on a plan. “All passengers and crew will be tested for the coronavirus and quarantined as necessary,” Pence said.
Princess said in an email the ship is currently about 50 miles off the coast of San Francisco. It said a critically ill passenger was taken from the ship to a medical facility for treatment unrelated to the virus.
The Coast Guard used a helicopter to drop gloves and masks to the ship, and the captain was awaiting “specific directives” on what to do next, the statement says.
While health officials said about 1,100 crew members will remain aboard, passengers could be disembarked to face quarantine, possibly at U.S. military bases or other sites. That’s what happened to hundreds of passengers who were exposed to the virus on another cruise ship in January.
People on social media pleaded Saturday with elected officials to let the ship dock as passengers endured a second full day confined to their rooms and cruise officials disclosed more information about how they think the initial outbreak occurred.
The ship was heading from Hawaii to San Francisco when it was held off the California coast Wednesday so 46 people with possible coronavirus symptoms could be tested. On Thursday, a military helicopter crew lowered test kits onto the 951-foot ship by rope and later flew them for analysis at a state lab.
Health officials undertook the testing after reporting that a 71year-old man who had been on a February voyage of the same ship to Mexico contracted the virus and died at a hospital in Placer County in Northern California. Others who were on that voyage also have tested positive in Northern California, Minnesota, Illinois, Hawaii, Utah and Canada.
A “presumed positive” patient was self-isolating at home in Nevada, health officials said.
In an interview, passenger Karen Dever of Moorestown, N.J., agreed that she should be tested for coronavirus but wants officials to let her go if her results come back negative.
“Fourteen more days on this ship, I think by the end I will need a mental health visit,” she said with a laugh. “I’m an American. I should be able to come home.”