Cruise ship hit by coronavirus to dock in Oakland

SAN FRANCISCO —A cruise ship that was hit by the new coronavirus is headed to the port of Oakland, California, the captain told passengers Saturday night.

Grand Princess Capt. John Smith, in a recording provided by passenger Laurie Miller of San Jose, told guests the ship will dock in Oakland. Princess Cruises says it’s expected to arrive on Monday. The ship is carrying more than 3,500 people from 54 countries.

“An agreement has been reached to bring our ship into the port of Oakland tomorrow,”Smith said. “After docking, we will then begin a disembarkation process specified by federal authorities that will take several days. Guests who require acute medical treatment and hospitalization will be transported to health care facilities in California.”

Summerlin resident Ronald Griebell, who, along with his wife and daughter, are quarantined in their rooms aboard the Grand Princess, said he was relieved to know a plan is in the works, but noted he would not be surprised if he was still on the ship by midweek.

“I can’t wait to get the hell off this ship,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal late Saturday night.

After medical screening, California residents who don’t require acute medical care, “will go to a federally operated isolation facility within California for testing and isolation,” Smith said.

U.S. guests from other states will be transported by the federal government to facilities in other states.

Crew members will be quarantined and treated aboard the ship.

Smith said the information he was given did not include any details about what would happen to passengers from other countries. “We are working to obtain more details overnight. … I’m sorry I can’t provide you more details right now,” he said.

Griebell said passengers have not yet been advised on how the testing process will work.

Deaths in Florida

Meanwhile, Florida reported two coronavirus deaths — the first outside the West Coast. Health officials said the people in their 70s died in Santa Rosa County in Florida’s Panhandle and in the Fort Myers area after traveling overseas. Florida also raised the number of people who have tested positive for COVID-19 — the disease caused by the coronavirus — from four to seven.

The U.S. death toll from the virus climbed to 16, with all but three victims in Washington state. The number of infections swelled to nearly 400, scattered across about half of the U.S. states. Pennsylvania, Indiana, Minnesota and Nebraska have reported their first cases.

On Friday, Vice President Michael Pence spoke of plans for the people on the Grand Princess cruise ship.

“Those that will need to be quarantined will be quarantined. Those who will require medical help will receive it,” Pence said.

President Donald Trump, speaking Friday at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, said he would prefer not to allow the passengers onto American soil but will defer to the recommendations of medical experts.

“I don’t need to have the numbers (of U.S. cases) double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault,” Trump said while touring the CDC in Atlanta. “And it wasn’t the fault of the people on the ship either. OK? It wasn’t their fault either. And they are mostly American, so I can live either way with it.”

‘Thank God, we have a window!’

Passengers aboard the Grand Princess remained holed up in their rooms Saturday. Some said ship officials only informed them of the confirmed coronavirus cases after they first learned about it from news reports.

Steven Smith and his wife, Michele, of Paradise, California, went on the cruise to celebrate their wedding anniversary.

The Smiths said they were a bit worried but felt safe in their room, which they had left just once since Thursday to video chat with their children.

Crew members wearing masks and gloves delivered trays with their food in covered plates and left them outside their door.

To pass the time they have been watching television, reading and looking out the window.

“Thank God, we have a window!” Steven said.

The ship was heading from Hawaii to San Francisco when it was held off the California coast Wednesday so 46 people with possible coronavirus symptoms could be tested. On Thursday, a military helicopter crew lowered test kits onto the 951-foot (290-meter) ship by rope and later flew them for analysis at a state lab.

Health officials undertook the testing after reporting that a 71-year-old man who had been on a February voyage of the same ship to Mexico contracted the virus and died this week at a hospital in Placer County in Northern California. Others who were on that voyage also have tested positive in Northern California, Minnesota, Illinois, Hawaii, Utah and Canada. A “presumed positive” patient was self-isolating at home in Nevada, health officials there said.

Health officials in Madera and Santa Cruz counties confirmed Saturday two more cases in California. Ventura County said Friday it had tested five residents who had been on the earlier cruise; one person was positive.

Some passengers who had been on the Mexico trip stayed aboard for the current voyage — increasing crew members’ exposure to the virus.

Cruise ships vulnerable

Another Princess ship, the Diamond Princess, was quarantined for two weeks in Yokohama, Japan, last month because of the virus. Ultimately, about 700 of the 3,700 people aboard became infected in what experts pronounced a public-health failure, with the vessel essentially becoming a floating germ factory.

Hundreds of Americans aboard that ship were flown to military bases in California and other states for two-week quarantines. Some later were hospitalized with symptoms.

An epidemiologist who studies the spread of virus particles said the recirculated air from a cruise ship’s ventilation system, plus the close quarters and communal settings, make passengers and crew vulnerable to infectious diseases.

“They’re not designed as quarantine facilities, to put it mildly,” said Don Milton of the University of Maryland.

Worldwide, the virus has infected more than 100,000 people and killed over 3,400, the vast majority of them in China. Most cases have been mild, and more than half of those infected have recovered.

Review-Journal staff writer Dalton LaFerney contributed to this report.