SEARCH FOR CRUISE SHIP PASSENGERS
Cruise ship firm Holland America Line said it was working with governments and health experts to track passengers who disembarked from its Westerdam ship docked in Cambodia after an American woman tested positive for coronavirus in Malaysia.
More than 100 have already left the country, while some 300 are reportedly still in Cambodia.
American passengers were taken off another cruise liner on Sunday to fly home after being quarantined for two weeks off Japan.
Seventy new coronavirus cases were confirmed on board the Diamond Princess where 3,700 passengers and crew have been held since Feb. 3. Some 355 people on board have tested positive for the disease, by far the largest cluster of cases outside China.
Canadian, Italian, South Korean and Hong Kong passengers were expected to follow soon, after their governments also announced plans to repatriate passengers.
"Leaving in a few hours. No details. Might be going to Texas or Nebraska," Gay Courter, one of the American passengers on board, told Reuters. She said she expected to spend another two weeks in quarantine on U.S. soil.
The ship, owned by Carnival Corp., has been held in the Japanese port of Yokohama with 3,700 passengers and crew on board. Those with the disease have been taken to hospital in Japan and no one from the ship has died. Around half of the guests onboard are from Japan.
Countries that have announced plans to fly their citizens home from the ship say they will take them only if they are symptom-free, and quarantine them on arrival.
Taiwan reported its first fatality on Sunday. The first fatality in Europe was reported on Saturday, an 80-year-old Chinese man who died at a Paris hospital.
