Two especially tasked planes have flown in from Japan with the Americans who were stuck in the cruise liner affected by the coronavirus in Japan.
After landing at military bases in Texas and California, these people are to be kept in quarantine to make sure they are not carrying Covid-19, the virus that caused the outbreak in China and other Asian nations.
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The first flight with the passengers from the cruise ship landed at Travis air force base, Northern California, at around 11:30 pm local time and the second one touched down at Lackland air force base, Texas, at 2 am.
Tarō Konō, the defense minister of Japan, tweeted shortly before the evacuation that Japanese forces helped in transferring 340 US citizens to Heneda airport, Tokyo, from Yokohama port, where the cruise ship Diamond Princess was harbored.
The people were transported in 14 buses.
The US administration told that they made the evacuation because the people on the said ship faced a high risk of exposure to coronavirus.
The people who have flown in on these flights were put in quarantine from February 5 while they were still on the ship.
According to the state department, 14 of the people evacuated from the ship confirmed that they had contacted coronavirus but owing to lack of symptoms, they were allowed to board the flights.
The Department of Health and Human Services and the state department later told in a joint report that these 14 people were kept separate from the other passengers while on the flight.
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the US National Institutes of Health, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said in a statement on Sunday that the virus can be passed to a healthy individual from a person who has little or no symptoms of the disease.
The people who have reached the US in these flights have already completed a quarantine period on the ship but will still be kept quarantined at the military facilities for another 14 days.
Japanese authorities announced on Monday that they had discovered another 99 infections on the ship, increasing the total number of infected people on the ship to 454.
So far, Japan has confirmed 419 cases of coronavirus in the country with one death. In the US, there’ve been 15 confirmed cases so far. One US citizen has died of the disease in China.
Cheryl and Paul Molesky were among the people who were evacuated from the ship. The Syracuse, New York couple chose to go into quarantine in the US rather than having one on the ship.
“We are glad to be going home,” Cheryl told NHK TV in Japan.
“It’s just a little bit disappointing that we’ll have to go through quarantine again, and we will probably not be as comfortable as the Diamond Princess, possibly.”
Cheryl also shared a video of herself and her husband boarding the planes among other US citizens with the Associated Press.
“Well, we’re exhausted, but we’re on the plane and that’s a good feeling. Pretty miserable wearing these masks though, and everybody had to go to the bathroom on the bus,” said Cheryl.
Some of the US citizens onboard Diamond Princess selected to stay on the ship to avoid the 14 days of quarantine back home while some others showed concern about flying with people infected with the virus.
Matthew Smith, one of the US citizens on the ship, told in a tweet that he witnessed a passenger without a face mask talking to another passenger from a close distance.
“If there are secondary infections onboard, this is why,” said Smith. “And you wanted me to get on a bus with her?”
Smith further told that the health experts from the US who came to visit their room were surprised at his and his wife’s decision to stay on the ship.
Smith said he told them: “Thanks, but we’re fine.”
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