IDespite the rapid spread of the new coronavirus on the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise liner near Yokohama (a suburb of Tokyo), several countries decided this weekend to quickly evacuate their nationals.
As of Sunday, 355 cases have been recorded on this vessel, 70 more compared to Saturday, the day when 67 new cases had already been confirmed.
But the 3,711 people initially on board have not yet all undergone examinations to establish their possible contamination.
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“So far we have tested 1,219 people,” said Japanese Health Minister Katsunobu Kato on the Japanese public broadcaster NHK, adding that dozens of the 355 infected people had no symptoms at this stage.
A meeting with experts was scheduled for Sunday afternoon at Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s office to assess the situation and take additional steps to contain the spread of the virus.
Diamond Princess passenger quarantine is scheduled to end on February 19, but recent developments could affect this schedule.
Emergency repatriation
Without delay, faced with the worsening situation and given doubts about the effectiveness of the measures taken, several governments decided to evacuate their nationals who appeared to be healthy and to place them in their respective countries for fourteen days in quarantine.
“As we told you yesterday (Saturday), the United States government recommends that United States citizens disembark from the Diamond Princess and return to the United States,” the US embassy in Tokyo wrote in an internet letter.
“This is a rapidly changing situation and we are taking additional steps to help American citizens,” she continued, ensuring that “the safety and well-being of our citizens is the top priority of the United States government” .
About 350 Americans remained on the boat on Saturday.
The Hong Kong government has also said it wants to repatriate its own – 330 nationals – “as soon as possible”.
Canadian authorities have taken a similar initiative “due to the extraordinary circumstances faced by Diamond Princess passengers and to ease the burden on the Japanese health care system,” they said in a statement. Approximately 250 Canadians had embarked on this cruise.
Australian media have reported that Canberra is also considering the option of evacuation.
The first departures by specially chartered plane should take place in the night from Sunday to Monday, the disembarkation of the Americans being fixed at 21HOO (12H00 GMT) according to the announcements made on board and retransmitted via social networks.
The Diamond Princess was on a cruise with several stopovers in Asia when a passenger who disembarked in Hong Kong was tested positive for coronavirus which appeared in December in the Chinese city of Wuhan (center). This led to the quarantine of the ship in the Japanese port of Yokohama.
Confirmed cases are landed and transferred to specially equipped Japanese hospitals.
Nearly 1,700 dead worldwide
According to the latest report released on Sunday by the Chinese authorities, the Covid-19 viral pneumonia caused the death of 1,665 people in mainland China (excluding Hong Kong and Macao), out of a total of 68,500 cases of contamination identified on the territory. Most of the deaths have been reported in central Hubei Province, the center of the epidemic that started in December in its capital Wuhan.
Only four deaths have been recorded elsewhere in the world: one in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory of Hong Kong and the other three respectively in Japan, the Philippines and France.
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