Death reports start emerging from quarantine cruise ship off the Japanese coast, that had around 600 passengers infected by deadly Coronavirus. Japan reveals two passengers died among aboard passengers in a quarantined cruise ship.
These are the first deaths among the more than 600 people reveals the Japanese health ministry official on Thursday.
Deceased are of Japanese national—an 87-year-old man and an 84-year-old woman, NHK reported. They were shifted to hospitals on February 11 and February 12 respectively, but both had underlying health issues, the broadcaster reported.
After a long haul, now hundreds of passengers have started disembarking from the ship, the Diamond Princess, soon after Japan declared that the two-week quarantine is over, though dozens of new cases on the vessel were being continuously reported.
It is said that people who have tested negative for the virus are only being released. But experts on infectious diseases argued insufficiencies in the quarantine protocols on the ship and raised questions on the decision to let them go free.
American passengers on the quarantined cruise ship should undergo new coronavirus test, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (C.D.C.) reported on today.
C.D.C. “has decided it is important to test all evacuees,” it said on yesterday in a written circular given to the Americans who were disembarked from the ship and are being isolated in quarantine at Travis Air Force Base in California.
The test often gives negative result early stages of the virus infection, so till now, travellers who were symptom-free and had been away from the infected people have not been tested.
Early this week, the US evacuated more than 300 passengers and isolated them in quarantine for two weeks. Fourteen among them are tested positive for the virus just before leaving Japan, others are tested positive once they entered California.
The C.D.C. said on Tuesday that it didn't want the remaining American passengers — quite 100 of them, including people still on the ship et al. who were hospitalized in Japan — to return for a minimum of a fortnight.