02/17/2020 - 10:03
- Clarín.com
- World
The cruise that was rejected by five countries on suspicion of coronavirus and was finally able to anchor in Cambodia, is news again. Just a few hours after several of the 1,455 passengers, including five Argentines, disembarked in the coastal city of Sihanoukville, the Malaysian authorities detected a positive case in an American tourist traveling in it.
Now they are looking for hundreds of travelers who, like her, had been authorized to return to their countries. It is still unknown if among them are the Argentines who were traveling on the ship .
The MS Westerdam cruise , which five Asian ports forbade him from approaching for fear of the epidemic, drifted for about 10 days at sea and was finally authorized to reach the port of Sihanoukville , in southern Cambodia. Japan, Guam, Taiwan, Thailand and the Philippines had denied him entry.
Of the total passengers, more than 1,200 disembarked and are mostly in Phnom Penh, waiting to be tested before being repatriated. But others left Cambodia and took several commercial flights to return to their countries.
Among those who have already left the country, 145 passed through Malaysia and one of them is an 83-year-old American tourist who was positively diagnosed with a coronavirus on Saturday at the Kuala Lumpur airport. The American company Holland America , operator of the Westerdam, and the authorities are now worried about an eventual contamination of other passengers who have already returned to their countries.
Holland America said it works "in close coordination" with several governments, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the virus detection centers in the United States "to investigate and follow people who might have been in contact" with the American tourist
Westerdam cruise, from the Holland America Line shipping company.
According to the list of passengers published by the EFE news agency , there were 651 Americans , 127 Britons , 91 Dutch and 57 Germans on the cruise, as well as more than thirty countries, including Argentina (5), Brazil (5), Chile (3), Ecuador (5), Spain (7) and Mexico (5).
For its part, the Ministry of Health of Cambodia said it "actively investigates all suspicious cases , " and urges the population to "not worry too much." But some cruise passengers walked through Sihanoukville after disembarking.
MS Westerdam passengers, after disembarking in Cambodia. (AFP)
A total of 233 passengers and 747 crew members remain on the cruise.
"We are going to extract samples of all these people to be tested," a local official told AFP , who added that they will remain on the ship until the results are known.
The COVID-19 epidemic has so far left 1,770 dead and more than 70,000 infected in mainland China, in addition to five other deaths and more than 800 cases in about thirty countries and territories.
With agency information.
JPE
