02/18/2020
02/18/2020
About 500 passengers will leave the quaint Diamond Princess liner in Japan on Wednesday after receiving negative test results for the new coronavirus. Hundreds of people on board had been infected.
“The exact number (of those who will leave on Wednesday) still varies, but it will be around 500 people,” he told a health ministry official. Only those who test negative and have not had close contact with an infected person will be allowed to get off the cruise ship, the official added.
Most of them will be Japanese: several countries, including the United Kingdom, have already announced their wish to repatriate their nationals on board.
Some 3,700 passengers and crew members of 56 nationalities, including two Swiss, were initially on the liner. The ship was placed in quarantine in early February in Yokohama Bay near Tokyo, after a positive test on a cruise ship landed in Hong Kong.
All were ordered to stay in their cabin for two weeks, but that did not stop the spread of the virus: at least 542 people were infected. It is the main source of contamination of the new coronavirus outside of China.
The death toll from the new coronavirus reached 1,886 dead on Tuesday in mainland China. Outside, there are only five deaths: one in Hong Kong, one in the Philippines, one in Japan, one in Taiwan and one in France.
ats, dpa
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