Two people infected with the coronavirus on board the Diamond Princess, the cruise ship blocked for over two weeks in Yokohama, have died: the Japanese public television NHK reports.
Meanwhile, the Chinese National Health Commission (NHC) has announced that 114 new deaths and 394 additional infections were detected yesterday, raising the total to 2,118 and 74,576 respectively. The new cases are in sharp decline compared to 1,749 on Tuesday, down to the lows of about a month. In the province of Hubei, the epicenter of the epidemic, 349 other infections have been reported after the removal of 279 cases that tested negative for nucleic acid tests. In fact, China has partially changed the parameters of prevention and control, allowing Hubei to remove the "clinically diagnosed" ones.
Chinese efforts to control the epidemic "are working," said Foreign Minister Wang Yi, seeing the reduction in new cases the result of the "robust action" put in place. "China is not only protecting its people, but also the rest of the world," added Wang, speaking at an ASEAN meeting in Laos.
After the Diamond nightmare, the Italians return today
For five hundred Diamond Princess passengers, already disembarked from the ship, the nightmare is over. The others, including 35 Italians, begin to see the light at the bottom of the tunnel after being imprisoned for two weeks on the cruise ship anchored in quarantine in the Japanese bay of Yokohama. A place that has become a "floating trap" where coronavirus infections continue to increase day after day: the latest updated balance is 621 infected.
After leaving Ciampino on Tuesday evening, the Falcon plane arrived yesterday afternoon with the medical team in charge of subjecting the Italians to tests to rule out the infection. In the staff sent to Japan also two doctors from Spallanzani of Rome, an anesthesiologist and an infectious disease specialist. Those who test negative will be able to disembark from the ship today, to return home in the evening with a second plane, a Boeing of the Air Force that left Italy last night. The flight should bring, in addition to thirty Italians, 27 citizens of other European Union countries to their homeland. Brussels has activated the civil protection mechanism to co-finance Italian flights.
Once landed at the military airport of Pratica di Mare, passengers will be subjected to the usual 14-day quarantine, the period deemed necessary by doctors to completely rule out the presence of the disease. For the first few days they will be held in the same military structure, then they will be transferred to the Olympic center of Cecchignola, after reclamation of the environments where the other Italians have so far returned in recent days from Wuhan, the Chinese city epicenter of the epidemic.
A third flight should depart at a later time to bring back the Italian passenger who was infected with the virus on board the Diamond Princess. It will be a bio-containment plane, the same type as the one used to bring home in recent days Niccolò, the seventeen-year-old from Friuli who had been stuck in Wuhan. If from the medical screenings on the ship other infected people are found, they too will be brought home with the same flight. Five Italian crew members will certainly remain on board, including the commander Gennaro Arma. Medical tests were conducted on all of the approximately 3,200 passengers of the Diamond Princess. The on-board quarantine period began on February 5, after a person landed in Hong Kong was found positive for coronavirus.
The Sanremo seafarer who landed in Cambodia in recent days from the other cruise ship that ended up in the center of the news, the Westerdam, on which at least one infected person, a US citizen, could breathe a sigh of relief. The man, who had placed himself in voluntary isolation at his home, was tested for the virus by decision of the Ministry of Health and tested negative.
