2 COVID-19 Deaths from Japan Cruise That Was Quarantined After Passengers Started to Disembark

Lest you’re not aware, there’s a cruise ship called Diamond Princess that’s been hit severely by the COVID-19 virus.

It all started on 3 February 2020, when the British cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, learned that a man who had disembarked in Hong Kong on 25 January had been tested positive for COVID-19.

Soon after, the ship did her first phase of health screening for all the guests and crew members, and 10 people were tested positive for the virus.

The ship has 2,666 guests and 1,045 crew members.

That was when the ship started her 14-day quarantine, as supplies like food and whatnot to be brought aboard the ship. In order to ensure that the guests are still comfortable, the cruise also provided more TV channels and 80 new video-on-demand releases.

The quarantine was supposed to end yesterday (19 February 2020), but with many new cases every day, the passengers did not all disembark at one go.

Instead, they would leave the cruise ship by groups, and charter flights have been arranged by the Embassies of other countries to bring them back to their respective countries. Only passengers who have been tested negative for COVID-19 would be allowed to travel, and most of them would still require an additional 14 days of quarantine upon arrival in their country of origin.

The cruise has now registered more than 620 infections, even though passengers have been told to stay in their cabins since 5 February 2020.

And today, two deaths due to COVID-19 in the cruise have been reported.

2 Deaths from Cruise That Was Quarantined After Passengers Started to Disembark

Japanese public broadcaster announced today that two passengers from the cruise ship had died.

That’ll bring the total number of deaths outside of China to 10 people.

If you think it should be 8, it’s because Iran had just reported two suspected cases of COVID-19 and two deaths from the virus. Both were “of old age”.

The two passengers who died after being infected with COVID-19 were of old age, too: both of them, a man and a woman, were in their 80s with underlying health conditions. They had been taken off the cruise ship on 11 Feb and 12 Feb to a hospital.

Experts Wonder if More Can be Done

While it’s a worthy effort to quarantine the entire ship, experts are questioning the effectiveness of the quarantine within the ship, since the number of infections have ballooned to about 20% in the confined ship.

A professor at the infectious diseases division of Japan’s Kobe University visited the ship and made these observations:

• Passengers and crew members moving freely between the green zone, which is supposedly infection-free, and the virus-hit red zone
• People eating together and sharing living quarters
• A failure to wear protective clothing, including among medical staff
• No professional infection control specialist on board

He has uploaded a YouTube video but deleted it shortly.

Japan Health Ministry, however, mentioned that “all passengers had been required to stay in their cabins since Feb 5 to contain the virus.”

There are five Singaporeans in the cruise ship.