500 passengers leave ship amid quarantine doubts
Print Edition
ABOUT 500 passengers left the cruise ship Diamond Princess yesterday at the end of a much-criticized two-week quarantine aboard the vessel, docked in Japan, that failed to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus among passengers and crew.
The quarantine’s flop was underlined as authorities announced 79 more cases, bringing the total on the ship to 621. Results were still pending for some other passengers and crew among the original 3,711 people on board.
Japan’s government has been questioned over its decision to keep people on the ship, which some experts have called a perfect virus incubator. The Diamond Princess is the site of the most infections outside of China.
Meanwhile, the government of China’s Hong Kong Special Administrative Region will dispatch charter flights to evacuate Chinese passengers on board the ship to Hong Kong, the Chinese Embassy in Japan said yesterday.
The first charter flight will depart Tokyo’s Haneda Airport at 1:45am (Japan time) today, according to a statement.
Many foreign governments, such as Britain and Australia, also say they will repatriate people from the ship but won’t let passengers return unless they go through another quarantine period, so it was striking to see passengers disembark, get into taxis and disappear into Yokohama, where the ship is docked.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that passengers and crew on the ship will be required to wait at least 14 days after disembarking from the ship before traveling to the United States.
Kentaro Iwata, a professor of the infectious diseases division of Kobe University, blasted the on-ship quarantine as a “major failure, a mistake.”
“It is highly likely secondary infections occurred,” Iwata said, saying scepticism from abroad of the quarantine was “only natural.”
He later said in an online video that he was self-quarantining after a brief visit to the ship, where he raised major concerns about the procedures on board.
“It was completely chaotic,” he said.
Japanese soldiers helped escort some passengers, including an elderly man in a wheelchair who wore a mask and held a cane. Some passengers got on buses to be transported to train stations. Some people still in their cabins waved farewell from their balconies to those who had already been processed.
“I am a bit concerned if I am OK to get off the ship, but it was getting very difficult physically,” a 77-year-old man from Saitama, near Tokyo, who got off with his wife, said. “For now, we just want to celebrate.”
Those disembarking with negative virus tests have fulfilled the Japanese quarantine requirement and were free to walk out and go home on public transportation, Japan’s Health Minister Katsunobu Kato said yesterday.
He said the plan was approved by experts from the National Institute of Infectious Diseases. Passengers are only asked to watch their health carefully for a few days and notify health authorities if they have any symptoms or worries.
Some passengers said on Twitter they received health forms earlier in the morning asking if they had symptoms such as a headache, fever or coughing. Passengers who tested negative and had no symptoms still had to get their body temperature checked before leaving.
Passengers were given a certificate stating their negative test results and completion of quarantine.
Still, Masao Sumida, an 84-year-old passenger from Chiba, near Tokyo, said he is worried people around him may have doubts. “I know I tested negative, but I’m afraid people may try to stay away from me,” he said.
About 500 passengers who were to leave yesterday had all left the ship by evening, and Japanese officials will spend the next three days conducting the disembarkation of 2,000 more. The Diamond Princess was quarantined in Yokohama after a passenger who left the ship earlier in Hong Kong was found to have the virus.
Even though Japanese officials insist the number of infected patients is leveling off, cases on the ship continue to mount daily. On Tuesday, 88 people tested positive after 99 others were found to be infected on Monday.
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