Free Republic

Though the coronavirus devastated the entire travel industry, cruising took a particularly brutal blow. After years of steady passenger growth and cruise lines competing with each other to launch the biggest and most elaborate ships, suddenly the industry went full astern. Ships like the Diamond Princess and the Grand Princess were major coronavirus hotspots, with passengers being locked in their staterooms as the disease spread quickly. Some countries also refused to let ships dock, leaving passengers stranded onboard for days. It was enough for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to issue a No Sail Order on March 14,...

OK, here are my questions. We had a perfect petri-dish coronavirus disease (COVID-19) experiment with the cruise ship “Diamond Princess”. That’s the cruise ship that ended up in quarantine for a number of weeks after a number of people tested positive for the coronavirus. I got to wondering what the outcome of the experiment was. So I dug around and found an analysis of the situation, with the catchy title of Estimating the infection and case fatality ratio for COVID-19 using age-adjusted data from the outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship (PDF), so I could see what the outcomes...

When California lawyers Matthew Smith and Katherine Codekas checked into a hotel in Tokyo last weekend, they decided not to hide where they had been. The couple, along with about 900 other passengers, were released from Feb 19 to 21 after a two-week quarantine on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, where a coronavirus outbreak has left more than 700 people infected and killed four Japanese nationals. Foreign governments evacuated hundreds of their citizens, including about 300 United States nationals, and imposed 14 more days quarantine. But Smith and his wife were not among them. Smith led a mutiny of about...

Most of the Americans monitored at the University of Nebraska Medical Center for coronavirus after evacuating a cruise ship in Japan tested positive for the virus, the Omaha World-Herald reports. UMNC said in a statement Thursday that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention verified the Nebraska Public Health Lab results showing that 11 of the 13 patients have the novel coronavirus. The other two evacuees who were taken to the Omaha hospital tested negative, the statement said.

A Japanese disease expert has branded the Diamond Princess quarantine a 'major failure', 'completely inadequate' and a 'mistake'. Kentaro Iwata said he had placed himself in a 14-day quarantine for fear of infecting his family after a brief visit on board the ship yesterday. The Kobe University infectious diseases expert said conditions on the ship were 'completely chaotic' and violated quarantine rules. His video has racked up more than a million views amid a barrage of criticism of Japanese authorities after 542 people were infected during the lockdown.

Japanese health officials are allowing the most vulnerable guests quarantined on the Diamond Princess docked just off of Yokohama to leave the cruise ship and complete their isolation on land, Carnival’s Princess Cruises said Thursday. The decision comes as the company confirmed 44 new cases of the coronavirus, which the World Health Organization has named COVID-19, aboard the cruise ship. That brings the total number of confirmed cases from the ship to almost 220

39 new cases in Japan. They were found on the “Diamond Princess” cruise ship off Yokohama, raising the ship’s total to 174.

Testing aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan has found 60 more confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, domestic broadcaster TBS TV said via Twitter. That brings total cases on the ship docked in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, to 130, according to TBS. The liner was placed on a two-week quarantine on arriving at Yokohama on Feb. 3.

Milena Basso and her husband Gaetano Cerullo are trapped on the quarantined Diamond Princess off the coast of Japan, with at least 64 cases of the killer virus confirmed on board. The couple said the situation on the ship is “desperate” with food and water running out and the disease spreading through the 2,000 trapped passengers. New cases are being confirmed every day, and the American newlyweds say they still have two weeks to wait before they can leave. Cerullo told Fox News: “We are kind of worried because we've still got two weeks on here assuming that works out...

Two more passengers, including another American, have fallen ill on the Diamond Princess cruise ship thatquarantined off the coast of Japan, bringing the ship's total to 63 passengers who have been diagnosed with coronavirus.