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 Vice President Mike Pence, recently appointed as the U.S.
government's point man on the coronavirus outbreak, said the cruise
ship Grand Princess will be brought to an unspecified non-commercial
port where all 2,400 passengers and 1,100 crew will undergo another
round of tests.
Pence said all crew members would remain quarantined aboard the
vessel, whether or not they test positive, but it was unclear what
precisely was in store for passengers who show no signs or symptoms
of illness.
"Those that need to be quarantined, will be quarantined. Those that
require additional medical attention will receive it," Pence told
reporters in a White House briefing.
"But with regard to the 1,100-member crew, we anticipate that they
will be quarantined on the ship, will not need to disembark," he
said.
Pence added: "It's very likely that the crew on the Grand Princess
was exposed on two different outings, and we know the coronavirus
manifested among the previous passengers."
Passengers expressed shock and dismay that they were not informed of
the test results before Pence announced it, and anguish over the
uncertainty of what would happen to them next.
"Everybody is doing the best they can with the information they're
given. I mean, why did we not know before the vice president
announced it on TV?" Kari Kolstoe, 61, a retired teacher and cancer
patient from Grand Forks, North Dakota, told Reuters in a phone
interview.
She said she was worried about returning home in time for her next
round of chemotherapy. "It's very unsettling."
On a visit to the headquarters of the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention in Atlanta, before the initial cruise ship
test results were released, President Donald Trump said he would
prefer the Grand Princess passengers remained on the ship for the
duration of a quarantine.
Otherwise, he said, allowing passengers back onto U.S. soil who
might become sick later would end up increasing the number of
coronavirus cases in the country.
"I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that
wasn't our fault," he said.
Princess Cruises, a unit of the world's leading cruise operator,
Carnival Corp, said in a statement that the ship's doctor was "in
the process of informing the guests and crew of their individual
results. All guests and affected crew will remain isolated in their
rooms."
"Guests will continue to be provided complimentary internet and
telephone to stay in contact with their families and loved ones, and
the ship's company is working to keep all guests comfortable," it
said.
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The Grand Princess predicament was reminiscent of the Diamond Princess cruise
liner, also owned by Carnival, that was quarantined off Japan in February and
was for a time the largest concentration of coronavirus cases outside China.
Experts have criticized Japanese bureaucrats' handling of the onboard
quarantine, as ultimately about 700 people were infected and six have died.
TRIP TO MEXICO
Diagnostic test kits were flown by an Air National Guard helicopter on Thursday
to the Grand Princess, where medical staff took samples from 46 passengers and
crew to determine if they have contracted the respiratory virus, Pence said.
The samples were carried back to a state laboratory in the Bay area, where
analysis was completed on Friday. Pence said 21 of the tests came back positive,
24 were negative and one was inconclusive. Of the 21, two were passengers and 19
were members of the crew, the cruise line said.
State and local officials acted to halt the cruise liner after learning people
aboard had fallen ill and two passengers who traveled on the same vessel last
month to Mexico later tested positive for coronavirus.
One, an elderly man from Placer County near Sacramento with underlying health
conditions, died this week, the first documented coronavirus fatality in
California. The other, from the Bay area, was described by California Governor
Gavin Newsom as gravely sick.
Health officials say both individuals likely contracted the virus aboard the
ship.
A third passenger from the Mexico trip, a Canadian woman from the province of
Alberta, has since been reported by health officials there to have tested
positive. A fourth passenger was reported by Minnesota health officials as that
state's first known case, a Ramsey County resident recovering at home.
Pence urged elderly people with serious underlying medical conditions - those
who health officials say are most at risk for developing serious and
life-threatening illness from coronavirus - "to think carefully about travel."
The Trump administration is contemplating an advisory discouraging U.S.
travelers from going on cruises for the time being, according to four U.S.
officials familiar with the situation.
U.S. health officials are also seeking to contact some 2,500 passengers who
disembarked the Grand Princess in San Francisco on Feb. 21 after the earlier
cruise to Mexico.
(Reporting and writing by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by
Steve Holland in Washington, Jeff Mason in Atlanta and Cath Turner in Los
Angeles; Editing by Bill Tarrant, Daniel Wallis and Sonya Hepinstall)
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