Coronavirus: Americans from quarantined cruise ship flown from Japan - BBC News

The first of two planes carrying hundreds of American citizens from a virus-stricken

cruise

ship

quarantined

off the coast of Japan arrived back in the United States. The plane was chartered by the US government and landed at Travis Air Force Base, which is located in Fairfield in California, you can see it here, it arrived in Australia, Canada, South Korea and Italy also did plans to evacuate its citizens. Japanese officials said the number of infections on the Diamond Princess

ship

has risen to nearly 400 and that makes it the largest cluster of cases outside of China. Well, in China itself it is now known that the outbreak has infected more than 70,000 people.

More than 2,000 new cases were reported on Monday, most of which occurred in Hebei province, as Freya Cole reports. These images published by Chinese state media show a sparkling clean hospital floor. with beds carefully prepared and aligned with perfect precision for the victims of their new corona virus, but this unverified video shared on social media paints a very different picture. The person who posted it says this is the situation in the emergency department of the provincial People's Hospital on Sunday. In the afternoon, the hospital is in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak. It is crowded and overcrowded.

The Chinese Communist Party has insisted that it is managing to stop the outbreak. Strict travel bans are in place, especially with the province's citizens ordered to stay home unless there is an emergency, but some public health experts say quarantine is not the only response. This is a respiratory virus that spreads efficiently in the community. It's not something you can really expect to contain. It spread probably for weeks in China before anyone found out. at least November so it spread around the world and probably mixed with our cold and flu season in many different countries because most cases are mild and unrecognized so I don't think this is something that can be contained and we really need to move from containment mindsets to mitigation mindsets because we are really wasting time and resources on containment the latest official figures reveal that there has been a decrease in new cases but the numbers are still high over 70,000 scientists worldwide They are working furiously to create a vaccine, but until then it remains a volatile global health situation Freya Kohl BBC News and we are going to take it live now to California to Fairfield f base, we can see Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield , we can see the second plane carrying American citizens that has just arrived there now.

So there were two planes carrying a few hundred passengers. passengers aboard the Diamond Princess and this is the second one we can see here now, but what is really happening aboard that

cruise

ship right now, our correspondent in Japan, Rupert Wingfield Hayes, told us best if there has been another big jump Following the number of cases confirmed again on the ship today, the Japanese government is moving fairly quickly to try to test everyone on board. Today they tested another 504 people and of those five hundred and 499 tested positive for having the virus, so that's about it. 20% of the people they tested today and that follows big increases yesterday and Saturday 70 new cases on Sunday 60 70 cases on Saturday this indicates very clearly at least a strong suspicion that the quarantine on board that ship It's not working properly because it's already 13 days into the quarantine period of what was supposed to be a two-week quarantine and yet today we have 99 new cases and that, of course, is one of the reasons why Several governments, including the Americans, have begun to remove their citizens from the ship.

The first evacuation took place during the night. Two planes came from the United States to pick up about 350 Americans who boarded and recently, in the last few hours, landed. in California, where they will be

quarantined

again. It's a ship, Rupert, you would have thought that would mean it was easy to contain something like this. What do authorities say about why the quarantine is not effective? Well, the Japanese government has not given a clear response to that accusation. They continue with their line. that quarantine is a safe place and the best place to quarantine those people, but that has been questioned by experts around the world, including from places like Harvard University in the United States, where health experts have said that a boat is not a good place. quarantine people because you can keep people in their cabins, but there is a constant air conditioning system that circulates air around the ship, if the virus is airborne it can enter the air systems conditioning, if it is not transmitted through the air but by droplets, then it can be transmitted.

The crew is still working, they still have to prepare food and bring it to all passengers on board and there is a possibility of contact infection, so health experts say everyone should have been tested and removed. ship as soon as possible two weeks ago and that didn't happen what's happening on the ground? Rupert IC's celebrations for the Emperor's birthday have been postponed to this weekend. Any other changes to daily life in Japan. Well, it's still pretty quiet, I have to say, although there are infections. are slowly increasing in Japan and we have seen infections in several different areas of Japan appearing in several different areas.

People are pretty calm here, but the government is now taking steps to restrict some public activities, as you said. On the Emperor's birthday, the Emperor normally comes out and greets thousands of people who gather in front of the Imperial Palace on his birthday, which has been canceled because they are worried that there are so many people gathered in one place and now there is also talk about what will be . What will happen to the Tokyo Marathon on March 1 has yet to be confirmed, but there are unconfirmed reports that Tokyo is considering allowing only professional athletes to participate and discouraging or even preventing all amateurs from participating in the marathon this year. anus.

Just return now briefly to the United States, where the second plane that had been bringing American citizens home from Japan landed. This is actually San Antonio in Texas, where the plane won returning to California and this one from here returning to Texas where the passengers who will face another quarantine for virus checks in a corner in the United States. These photos come to us from San Antonio in