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The Ministry of Health of South Korea has assured that on Tuesday it will charter a plane to repatriate 14 South Koreans, 11 tourists and 4 crew members, aboard the Diamond Princess . The cruise has been stranded in the Japanese port of Yokohama for two weeks, after a passenger who landed in Hong Kong on February 1 tested positive for coronavirus.
Since then, 454 more people have been infected during the two-week imposed quarantine, which in principle should conclude on Wednesday, February 19. Japan's Health Minister Katshunobu Kato has assured that the landing of the more than 3,000 occupants who still remain on the ship - the sick have been transferred to hospitals - will then begin and end on Friday. In principle, he said that everyone will be subjected to a coronavirus test, although so far only about half have been examined, according to the latest figures from the Japanese Ministry of Health.
Before the spread of contagion, the United States evacuated more than 300 people from the ship on Sunday. Fourteen of them tested positive after landing, but still flew back to the US, isolated on the plane. Canada, Hong Kong and Australia will also evacuate their citizens, who will have to spend a 14-day quarantine upon returning to their places of origin.
Another cruise, the Westerdam , is stranded in the port of Sihanoukville, Cambodia, with 233 passengers and 747 crew on board after an American tourist tested positive for coronavirus on Saturday in Malaysia, two days after disembarking from the ship next to More than 1,200 people.
His contagion, whose origin is unknown because the two weeks that the ship had been sailing had shown no symptoms, raises doubts about the effectiveness of fifteen-day quarantines. The Holland America cruise line, to which Westerdam belongs, tries to locate those already disembarked, with hundreds still in Cambodia and hundreds back to their countries. Everyone who is still in Cambodia, including five Spaniards - one still on board and four in hotels in the country - will be tested for the virus.
The National Health Commission of China reported Tuesday of 1,886 new cases of Covid-19, the disease that causes the new coronavirus, emerged in Wuhan (Hubei, China) and 98 deaths in the second world economy, bringing the total number of infections to 72,436, with 1,870 deaths until midnight on Monday in China.
In total, since the first cases began to be detected in December, 12,652 patients have recovered, and 11,741 remain in serious condition. There are another 6,242 suspected cases of suffering from the disease.
The World Health Organization (WHO) ruled out Monday in a press conference in Geneva that it is a "pandemic", because "there is still no high-level community transmission outside of China," said the Executive Director for Emergencies Sanitary, Michael Ryan.
