02/13/2020 - 10:54
- Clarín.com
- Society
A cruise ship with more than 2,000 people on board, among which there are five Argentines, arrived in Cambodia on Thursday after being rejected in five countries for fear that there would be someone infected with coronavirus.
The Westerdam , of the shipping company Holland America Line, anchored this morning in front of the coast of Sihanoukville, headquarters of the main seaport of the country, as confirmed by the government spokesman, Neth Pheaktra, in his Twitter account.
According to the list of passengers published by the EFE news agency , there are 651 Americans, 127 Britons, 91 Dutch and 57 Germans, as well as more than thirty countries, including Argentina (5), Brazil (5), Chile (3 ), Ecuador (5), Spain (7) and Mexico (5).
Cambodia authorized the arrival of the cruise ship to its territory on Wednesday, while the shipping company reported that the ship is not in quarantine and has no reason to suspect that there are cases of the new coronavirus.
Sanitary personnel are in charge of examining the 1,455 passengers and 802 crew members of the ship, where they will remain until it is ruled out that one is a carrier of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.
According to the Khmer Times, authorities sent 20 samples of blood from passengers who had been sick to a laboratory in the capital to rule out that they are infected by the outbreak.
The ship, which departed on February 1 from Hong Kong, was scheduled to arrive on Saturday in the Japanese city of Yokohama, but the Japanese authorities denied entry after a person on board showed signs of being infected.
MS Westerdam cruise ship docked at a seaport in Preah Sihanouk province, Cambodia.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen announced on Wednesday night permission for Westerdam to dock in Sihanoukville after Taiwan, the Philippines, Guam and Thailand will reject the vessel even though so far none of the people on board have been sick position
The director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, thanked Cambodia and Hun Sen for their decision to allow the vessel to arrive.
"We appreciate this act of solidarity at a time when the world opens a window of opportunity to stop COVID-19 and stop stigma and fear," Ghebreyesus said on his Twitter account.
The US embassy, the country from which the bulk of the passengers came from, indicated that they sent a team that will work with the Westerdam crew, Cambodian authorities and other embassies staff to assist passengers to disembark and return to their countries of origin.
The case of Westerdam took place after the Japanese authorities quarantined another cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, where at least 218 of its 3,700 people on board have tested positive for the coronavirus.
The World Health Organization on Tuesday baptized the disease as COVID-19, while the causative coronavirus has received the name SARS-CoV-2 (previously provisionally called 2019-nCoV) by the International Virus Taxonomy Committee.
So far, the coronavirus caused 1,367 deaths and 59,805 infections .
With information from Télam.
JPE