3,600 Released From Hong Kong Cruise Ship After Officials Lift Coronavirus Quarantine
Thousands of crew members and passengers on Sunday were allowed to disembark from a cruise ship that had been under a four-day quarantine in Hong Kong over the coronavirus outbreak, health officials said.
- The World Dream cruise ship was quarantined in Hong Kong on Wednesday after three former passengers tested positive for the disease.
- All of the ship’s 3,600 crew members and passengers were on
lockdown in Hong Kong as the crew members—who may have had contact with
the infected passengers on an earlier trip—were tested.
- All 1,800 crew members tested negative for the virus, giving the rest of the ship clearance to disembark.
- Another cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, is currently under quarantine in Tokyo as 70 passengers on board have been diagnosed, including 12 Americans.
Key background: Chinese officials have locked down cities and public transit in China’s Hubei province, international airlines have suspended flights, multinational businesses are adjusting their supply chains and countries have instituted travel bans to and from China as the coronavirus continues to spread.
News peg: On Sunday, the death toll from the virus surpassed that of the SARS epidemic, which devastated China in 2002-3. There have been 812 deaths and 37,251 confirmed cases of the virus so far, according to the World Health Organization. All but two of the deaths—one in the Philippines and the other in Hong Kong—were in mainland China.
