“I’m relieved to finally get off the ship,” an elderly man in his 70s told reporters on Wednesday, February 19, 2020. “I want to go home and rest.” He was one of about 500 passengers, most of them elderly, who left the Diamond Princess in Yokohama that day after testing negative for the new coronavirus.
Chartered buses laid on by the city took many to Yokohama Station, according to The Japan Times. Others hailed taxis or met relatives at the pier. Japanese TV showed soldiers from the Self-Defence Forces escorting some passengers, among them an elderly man in a wheelchair wearing a face mask. Passengers still aboard waved from their cabin balconies.
The rules were strict. Only people who had tested negative and had not shared a cabin with an infected passenger could go. Anyone who had been in contact with a case faced 14 more days in quarantine. The crew would start a fresh quarantine only after the last passenger left. Local health authorities expected just over 500 people off on Wednesday and another 2,500 over the next two days, The Guardian reported. About half of the passengers were Japanese.
Relief, and doubts
Not everyone felt easy about it. A 77-year-old man told Kyodo News: “I am a bit concerned if I am okay to get off the ship, but it was getting very difficult physically.” Passengers said on Twitter they had been handed health forms asking about headache, fever and cough.
The ship had been moored in Yokohama since February 3, after a passenger who left in Hong Kong in late January tested positive. By Wednesday at least 542 of the 3,711 people originally aboard had been diagnosed, the largest cluster of infections outside mainland China. Princess Cruises said 169 people who had recently tested positive were still on board waiting to be taken to hospital.
Kentaro Iwata, an infectious disease specialist at Kobe University hospital, spent several hours on the ship the day before. Letting people off was a good idea, he told the Guardian, because conditions on board were dangerous. But “it is possible that some people who recently tested negative could turn out to be positive,” he said, and cleared passengers should be watched closely for another two weeks. Michael Ryan of the World Health Organization said: “Clearly there has been more transmission than expected on the ship.”
Japan defended its handling. Yoshihide Suga, the government’s top spokesman, backed the quarantine, and Takaji Wakita, head of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, said: “As far as we know, once the test is negative they remain negative.”
Other governments were already moving. The United States had flown out more than 300 citizens over the weekend, and Australia, Canada and Hong Kong sent chartered planes. More than 1,000 crew members, some of them infected and taken to medical facilities, had kept working throughout.
Sources
- Coronavirus deaths hit 2,000 as cruise ship disembarked | DW
- Coronavirus: Diamond Princess exodus begins amid criticism over quarantine | The Guardian
- Diamond Princess ordeal ends for passengers who tested negative for COVID-19 | The Japan Times
