Another hundred passengers and crew on the Diamond Princess cruise ship confined in Japan have been confirmed with coronavirus as the first Australians airlifted from Wuhan cleared quarantine.
Another 99 people have tested positive for coronavirus onboard the stricken cruise ship, bringing the total number of confirmed infections to 454.
This is as the first Australians evacuated from China’s coronavirus epicentre of Wuhan have arrived back on the mainland after 14 days in quarantine on Christmas Island off the West Australian coast.
The evacuees were housed inside a highly-secure immigration detention centre previously used for asylum seekers.
Strict quarantine conditions included the evacuees being separated into three different compounds in the detention centre and further divided into family groups. Precautions included twice-daily medical checks with evacuees ordered to wear masks whenever they were outside their rooms.
A second group of 36 Australian evacuees, who flew out of Wuhan on an Air Zealand flight and arrived on Christmas Island two days after the first group are due to fly home on Wednesday. Another cohort of evacuees who were flown into Darwin about a week later were transferred to an unused workers’ camp in Howard Springs.
This follows Australia’s decision to follow America’s lead in evacuating their nations from the Diamond Princess. After the Americans from the Diamond Princess — whose passengers were confined to their cabins on February 3 — were flown back to the United States; Australia announced it would follow suit on Wednesday.
With about 14 of the 400 American evacuees testing positive, evacuees from both countries will face another two weeks of quarantine after arriving home. Another 40 American passengers who were diagnosed with the virus have already been transferred to hospitals in Japan.
The total number of people infected around the world climbed to more than 71,000 on Monday including a further 2048 confirmed cases in China where the total number of dead stands at around 1770. Five people have died outside China and, out of the 105 deaths reported in China on Monday, 100 were in Hubei province which is the centre of the outbreak.
Concern is also growing over possible infections among passengers from another cruise liner that docked in Cambodia last week. On Sunday a traveller from the MS Westerdam was confirmed as having the virus in Malaysia; days after disembarking along with hundreds of other passengers.
Authorities do not know how many passengers still remain in Cambodia or have travelled on to other destinations with fears of other infected passengers returning to their home countries unaware they may be carrying the highly-contagious form of the disease.
