American passenger aboard quarantined Japan cruise ship creates infection panic during evacuation as she chants ‘USA, USA’ with no face mask, as Hazmat-wearing bus drivers collect them for flight back to U.S.
U.S. evacuations from the Diamond Princess started on Sunday in Japan as the number of new cases diagnosed on the vessel jumped to 355
The cruise ship was placed in a 14-day quarantine in early February after a former passenger tested positive for the virus
The U.S. announced on Saturday they would offer Americans the option to leave the ship and fly home where they will face another 14-day isolation period
Americans who opted to leave were brought off the ship in groups and passed through a makeshift passport control
Other Americans on board, however, have declined the evacuation including lawyer Matthew Smith and his wife
He said a fellow American passenger was standing on her balcony chanting ‘USA’ as buses arrived to collect them without a face mask on
Among those on board who have tested positive are an elderly couple from Canada who will be taken off the ship to be isolated
By EMILY CRANE
DAILYMAIL.COM
16 February 2020
Americans have started leaving a quarantined coronavirus cruise ship in Japan to board chartered flight home to the United States after the number of new cases diagnosed on the vessel jumped to 355.
The evacuations from the Diamond Princess started on Sunday, or early Monday local time, after the cruise ship was placed in a 14-day quarantine in early February after a former passenger tested positive for the virus.
U.S. authorities announced on Saturday they would offer the 380 Americans on board the option to leave the ship and fly home where they will face another 14-day isolation period.
The Japanese defense ministry said around 300 of them were preparing Sunday night to leave on buses to take them to Tokyo’s Haneda Airport.
Americans who opted to leave were brought off the ship in groups, passing through a makeshift passport control but undergoing no health checks.
An American passenger on board, Sarah Arana, said the passengers boarded buses driven by personnel in head-to-toe protective suits and were told that the more than a dozen vehicles would travel in a convoy.
‘I am happy and ready to go,’ Arana told AFP before leaving the ship. ‘We need a proper quarantine, this was not it.’
Arana, a 52-year-old medical social worker, said the U.S. government should have intervened ‘much sooner, at the beginning’.
‘This was too much for Japan and they shouldn’t have had to bear the burden,’ she said. ‘The people of Japan did not deserve this. I am full of gratitude.’
Other Americans on board, however, have declined the evacuation, despite being warned they will still have to wait two weeks and test negative for the virus before being allowed back to the United States.
‘My health is fine. And my two-week quarantine is almost over. Why would I want to be put on a bus and a plane with other people they think may be infected when I have spent nearly two weeks isolated from those people?’ Matt Smith, an American lawyer on the ship with his wife, tweeted.
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