Hundreds of passengers evacuated from Grand Princess cruise ship taken by bus to chartered flights

Almost a thousand more passengers were disembarked from the Grand Princess cruise ship on Tuesday and driven away to be placed in quarantine at military bases around the United States amid fears they may have contracted coronavirus after 21 people got sick. 

After 407 people, including two hundred Canadians, were evacuated late Monday night, a further 999 were evacuated from the ship throughout Tuesday, bringing the total number of passengers disembarked to 1,406. 

There still remains an estimated 1,015 passengers on board and 1,113 crew members. 

Among those who disembarked Monday were two travelers who tested positive for the coronavirus on Friday. They were taken to the hospital alongside their travel companions. 

Nineteen crew members also tested positive Friday but have been deemed ‘asymptomatic’ and remain on the ship in isolated cabins. 

Addressing a news conference on Tuesday in Sacramento, the state capital, Governor Gavin Newsom said he hoped to finish getting all the roughly 2,400 passengers off the ship within 72 hours. 

On Tuesday night, 142 Britons were flown back to the United Kingdom but will not be placed into quarantine. 

Instead, they will be asked to self-isolate at home and told to only get in touch with the NHS if they fall ill – despite the fact infect patients are highly contagious a week before showing symptoms. 

They are expected to land back in the UK on Wednesday morning.  

Once they leave the ship, passengers are being screened before boarding a bus to take them to Travis Air Force Base in Northern California or another military base. 

Travis Air Force expected to welcome 810 Californian passengers in total on Tuesday. 

Other American passengers are being driven by bus to take a charter plane from Oakland International Airport where they are sent to other military bases around the country to be placed in quarantine for 14 days.  

According to a press release from Princess Cruises on Tuesday, ‘once they disembark, American guests will be transferred to either Travis Air Force Base in Solano County, California; Miramar Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego; Lackland Air Force Base in Bexar County, Texas; or Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Georgia’. 

California residents will be sent to the Travis Air Force base in Fairfield or Marine Corps Air Station Miramar near San Diego.

Non-Californians will be flown to Joint Base San Antonio Lackland in Texas or Dobbins Air Force Base in Georgia. 

On Tuesday evening, the first passengers were pictured arriving in Joint Base San Antonio Lackland in San Antonio, Texas, for their quarantine. This is the third set of quarantined visitors to arrive at the base.  

In February, it took in 91 citizens repatriated from Wuhan, China, and later received 140 passengers from the Diamond Princess Cruise Ship. 

The base was expecting to receive about 380 passengers from the Grand Princess.  

All passengers sported masks and had their luggage with them as they arrived on the tarmac. They were met as they got off the plane by medical staff. 

Passengers still on board the ship have little information on when they will be disembarking. 

‘We haven’t received any information… We have not received anything in writing or anything like that to say where we’re going or if we’re even leaving today,’ Donna LaGuesse told USA Today earlier on Tuesday. 

Her sister-in-law had received a luggage tag meaning that she would be getting off the ship soon but neither knew which military base they would be sent to and if they could end up separated. 

According to Princess Cruises, Health & Human Services teams have been on board the Grand Princess to assist with medical screenings and interviews and have prioritized those who require the most medical attention and care.  

On Tuesday evening, 24 passengers were taken to buildings on the Asilomar State Beach and Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove where they will be temporarily housed.

The passengers are not known to have contracted the coronavirus but ‘because they have mild symptoms that do not require hospitalization, they cannot be quarantined at Travis Air Force Base’.  

Once all guests have disembarked, the crew will remain on board and the ship will leave San Francisco Bay. 

‘Once disembarkation of the guests is completed, remaining crew members will remain onboard and Grand Princess will depart from San Francisco Bay. Plans for a crew quarantine are still being determined,’ Princess Cruises added in Tuesday’s statement. 

All the remaining U.S. passengers will be tested once they reach their destinations at quarantine housing at one of the four military bases.

Among Monday’s evacuees were 240 Canadians who were loaded on specially chartered evacuation flights home to start a quarantine of their own. 

Around 2,000 people – including 142 Britons – were left on the ship overnight, anxiously waiting for disembarkation to restart on Tuesday morning for their chance to leave.   

The UK Foreign Office said a flight to take the Britons home would arrive in California late Tuesday, due to arrive home on Wednesday morning. 

They added that the passengers would not be quarantined on their return to Britain but will be asked to self isolate. 

‘The British nationals returning from the Grand Princess cruise ship will be asked to self-isolate at home and followed up on by PHE on a daily basis as a precautionary approach,’ Public Health England told The Sun. 

British passengers with symptoms won’t be allowed on the plane and will be taken to a hospital in San Francisco instead.

It is unclear where the evacuated will land but it is not thought to be RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire or Boscombe Down in Wiltshire, where previous repatriated Britons have been quarantined.

The Grand Princess was forced to idle off the coast of California for several days after a coronavirus outbreak was confirmed on board, but finally made port in Oakland on Monday and an evacuation started.

US authorities decided not to quarantine people on board the ship after similar efforts on board another Princess Cruises ship – the Diamond Princess – failed, sickening more than 700 people and leading to six deaths.  

‘Everyone was hollering and clapping’ as the giant vessel sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge and entered the harbor, passenger Karen Schwartz Dever said. 

Carolyn Wright, 63, of Santa Fe, New Mexico, could look out of her cabin window as passengers lined up. Around them, she noted, were people in yellow protective clothing, gloves and even a few hazardous materials suits.

For days, passengers aboard the ship had been isolated in their cabins. When they were finally allowed a few minutes on deck, she said, they were warned to wear masks and try to stay 6 feet away from each other.

But after docking, video showed long lines forming for the processing tents. Ambulances were on hand to take some passengers away.

‘They were cueing up the passengers like cattle,’ Wright said. ‘Everybody was bunched up. They were physically touching each other and they were backed up along the gangplank.’ Then, she said, they were taken away in chartered buses.

‘I’m just totally freaked out by that,’ said Wright. ‘It’s outrageous. If that’s safe, then why were we stuck in our rooms? It’s been stressed for the past five days that we’re not to have any contact with any other passengers?’

‘We’re trying to stay calm and were trying to stay positive but it’s getting harder and harder. They can’t make up their minds how to keep us safe,’ said Wright’s cabin mate, Beryl Ward, 77, of Santa Fe.

‘The president didn’t even want us to get off the ship. So that didn’t make me happy,’ she added. ‘Wish you were here, Mr. Trump!’

On Sunday, before the ship docked, Dr. John Redd of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had urged passengers to remain in their rooms and said: ‘We’re making every effort to get them off the ship as safely and quickly as possible.’

He called the elaborate but quickly planned disembarkation process a ‘really unprecedented and difficult operation.’

The Grand Princess had been held off the coast since Wednesday because of evidence that it was the breeding ground for more than 20 infections tied to a previous voyage.

U.S. passengers will be flown or bused from the port – chosen for its proximity to an airport and a military base – to bases in California, Texas and Georgia for testing and a 14-day quarantine. Some arrived Monday night at Travis Air Force Base in Northern California. The ship carried people from 54 countries, and foreigners were to be whisked home.

But Wright and others said nobody had been told the details. Only about 50 people had been tested for the virus.

‘I’m willing to be quarantined,’ Wright said. ”But I want to know if I’m positive or not. We don’t even know if we’re going to get tested. It’s all rumor and speculation.’

‘I’m bored and frustrated,’ she added. ‘All of a sudden a two-week vacation has turned into a five-week vacation.’ 

Passengers need to worry about who is looking after their children or pets, not to mention preparing their taxes before the deadline and earning a living. 

A professional photographer, she was looking at five weeks without earning a salary.

About 1,100 crew members, 19 of whom have tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, will be quarantined and treated aboard the ship, which will dock elsewhere after passengers are unloaded, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has said.

The California governor and Oakland mayor sought to reassure people that none of the cruise ship passengers would be exposed to the public before completing the quarantine. Officials were trying to decide where the ship and its crew would go next.

Cruise ships have come under scrutiny by those who view them as potential germ factories because they pack thousands of people in close quarters.

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.

A third vessel, the Caribbean Princess, was supposed to dock in Grand Cayman on Monday but the cruise line said it will keep its thousands of passengers and crews from disembarking until crew members are tested for COVID-19.

Around the world, nations have limited the movements of millions of people in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19. Italy was to impose travel restrictions and other strict public health measures nationwide starting Tuesday.

In Northern California, Santa Clara County announced a ban of all large gatherings of at least 1,000 people for the rest of the month in response to the coronavirus outbreak. 

The announcement Monday came hours after the public health department announced the county’s first coronavirus death, a woman in her 60s.

The virus has shaken global markets, with stocks taking their worst one-day beating on Wall Street since 2008 and oil prices suffering their most brutal losses since the start of the 1991 Gulf War. 

Even with Asian markets posting modest gains Tuesday, fear was rampant that economies stood at the brink of recession.

For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia.

According to the World Health Organization, people with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three to six weeks to recover. 

In mainland China, where the virus first exploded, more than 80,000 people have been diagnosed and more than 58,000 have so far recovered.

The virus has infected over 1,000 people in the United States, and at least 31 have died, most in Washington state. 

Surgeon General Jerome Adams said communities will need to start thinking about canceling large gatherings, closing schools and letting more employees work from home, as many companies have done after an outbreak in the Seattle area.

Pearl Jam on Monday announced it was postponing 17 North American shows on its upcoming tour over coronavirus concerns.

In Silicon Valley, NASA’s Ames Research Center is essentially closed with restricted access because an employee tested positive Sunday for the coronavirus. Workers will be on ‘mandatory telework status’ and three earth science airplane missions are being delayed to later this year, the county said.

Several universities have begun online-only courses, including the University of Washington, Stanford University and Columbia University.