Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters
- The Diamond Princess cruise ship went from 10 cases of the new coronavirus to more than 630 over the course of its two-week quarantine.
- Experts and officials have criticized the decision to keep people on the ship and poor hygiene practices onboard.
- Here's how the cruise ship ended up with more than half of all novel coronavirus cases outside China.
- For the latest case total, death toll, and travel information, see Business Insider's live updates here.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship got their first piece of bad news on February 4: Ten people onboard had tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
It was the beginning of a two-week ordeal of quarantine orders and disease response that has been widely criticized as a failure. On Friday, Japan's Ministry of Health reported that 634 people from the ship had tested positive for the virus. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported an additional 18 cases from the ship, with an expectation that more will arise.
Two people have died.
"The quarantine was not justified, and violated the individual rights of the passengers while allowing the virus to literally pick them off one-by-one," Dr. Amesh Adalja, who works at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told Business Insider in an email.
Adalja and other experts have criticized the decision to keep passengers and crew on the ship and said poor hygiene practices helped spread the virus.
"I'd like to sugarcoat it and try to be diplomatic about it, but it failed," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told USA Today. "People were getting infected on that ship. Something went awry."
Here's how it got so bad.
On February 1, a man who'd been on the Diamond Princess tested positive for the new coronavirus six days after leaving the ship. It docked in the port of Yokohama, Japan, three days later.
Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters
The man, from Hong Kong, boarded the ship in Japan and stayed on board for five days, then disembarked in his hometown.
When it docked in Yokohama, the ship had 3,711 crew members and guests.
According to The New York Times, it took Japanese officials more than 72 hours to lock down the ship after they were notified about the Hong Kong man's case.
By the following morning, 10 people on the ship had tested positive for the virus. Japan's Ministry of Health placed the entire boat under a 14-day quarantine.
@daxa_tw via AP
Passengers had already been on the ship for two weeks, since the quarantine came at the end of their scheduled cruise.
Japanese health officials continued testing passengers and transported those who tested positive to health facilities on land.
AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko
However, testing takes a day or more, since it involves collecting and submitting spit and mucus samples.
Spencer Fehrenbacher, an American grad student on the ship, told Business Insider that he experienced a "wall for information" about test results. He said on February 6 that he'd been waiting to get his own results for two days.
Other passengers reported long delays in getting tested at all, even after they reported symptoms.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
See Also:
- 2 studies of coronavirus patients suggest the disease's incubation period could be longer than the standard quarantine period of 14 days
- The coronavirus outbreak is reaching a global tipping point, and the window to contain it is 'narrowing,' according to WHO
- The coronavirus just killed a 29-year-old doctor who postponed his wedding to fight the disease
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