Americans evacuated from ship in Japan

American passengers were evacuated from a cruise ship that had been quarantined for more than a week in the Japanese port city of Yokohama after hundreds of people on board fell ill with the coronavirus.

The Americans boarded two chartered flights to the United States, and the flights departed Tokyo at 7:05 a.m. Monday Japan time, according to a statement by the U.S. Embassy in Japan.

As the passengers prepared to leave the country, Japanese health officials said the number of confirmed coronavirus cases found on the ship, the Diamond Princess, had grown by 70, to 355.

Including the cases aboard the Diamond Princess, Japan has recorded the highest number of infections from the new coronavirus outside mainland China. Worldwide, more than 68,500 people have been infected and at least 1,669 have died, almost all in mainland China.

“Can’t get off here fast enough,” Sarah Arana, 52, a medical social worker from Paso Robles, California, told reporters on Sunday.

The U.S. Embassy had recommended that its citizens stay aboard the ship during a 14-day quarantine period. But it suddenly changed course on Saturday, citing “a rapidly evolving situation” as conditions appeared to worsen.

American passengers said they were told to prepare to leave the ship at 9 p.m. local time. Their flight was scheduled to depart Haneda Airport in Tokyo at 3 a.m. on Monday.

Officials said they would be taken to one of two military air bases in the United States.

But the process, taken deck by deck, went slowly. It took several hours to load all passengers on buses to take them to Haneda Airport.

On one of the buses, Gay Courter, 75, an American novelist traveling with her husband, Philip, said the passengers were mostly silent. A doctor in a yellow hazmat suit accompanied the group.

“Clearing my throat sounds like thunder,” Gay Courter wrote in an email from the bus.

All passengers were given N95 respirators — a heavy-duty mask fitted to the face that filters out 95% of smaller air particles — to wear on board the repurposed cargo planes, Courter said.

Some sections of her flight were segregated from others, with those who had tested positive but were not yet showing symptoms sitting in a tented area of the plane, she wrote from on board.

When the ship was placed under quarantine, more than 3,700 passengers and crew were on board, including about 400 Americans. Those found to have the virus and some particularly vulnerable passengers were taken off the ship.

Only those passengers who were screened and did not show any symptoms of the illness were allowed to board the flights bound for the United States, according to a statement from the State Department.

Once in the United States, the passengers will be required to undergo a two-week quarantine at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California, or Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio.