Over 3,500 people quarantined on Diamond Princess cruise

[Starwind]

Opinion piece from CBC news (Canada's national broadcaster):


Why quarantining a cruise ship during a coronavirus outbreak made a bad situation worse

Ongoing spread of coronavirus on the Diamond Princess defeats purpose of quarantine, experts say

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/coronavirus-quarantine-cruise-ship-diamond-princess-1.5464975

 

[Dreams&wishes]

They did health checks when they arrived in Cambodia. And I am positive that everyone was warned to keep an eye on their health when they returned home, as they started in Hong Kong.

For this woman, The Westerdam left on 1FEB from Hong Kong, she had no symptoms for the 2 weeks at sea. Shows that it's not an exact science. Or she caught the virus in Malaysia (or Cambodia)

Crazy, this is where I think that maybe the studies that report a longer incubation time may be true...i just hope there aren't as many passengers with the virus as the Princess going around the world.

 

[QueenElinor]

Today’s letter from the US told citizens on the ship they would all have to do another 14 day quarantine in the US after their charter flight home.

But at least that's a functional quarantine.

67 more cases today... And I read that thy are thinking of extending the quarantine date.

And this is not a functional quarantine.

Don't they say that "Insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results"? This is insanity, everyone needs to come off of there. Other countries need to step up and help or Japan will have a couple thousand cases of COVID19 to tend to. What a nightmare.

 

[QueenElinor]

Crazy, this is where I think that maybe the studies that report a longer incubation time may be true...i just hope there aren't as many passengers with the virus as the Princess going around the world.

There are. Most of the rest of the world is not banning travel to/from China, and some airlines are still willing to fly those routes.

Crazy, this is where I think that maybe the studies that report a longer incubation time may be true...i just hope there aren't as many passengers with the virus as the Princess going around the world.

Most of the experts seem to think that the "long incubation period" is really just that the patient was exposed more recently, but didn't know it. As @Karin1984 mentioned, she could have picked it up in Malaysia. That's actually pretty likely. Malaysia has a lot of cases for a country their size and not great public health infrastructure to track it. They get many travelers from China, too.

 

[Adventurelawyer]

They did health checks when they arrived in Cambodia. And I am positive that everyone was warned to keep an eye on their health when they returned home, as they started in Hong Kong.

For this woman, The Westerdam left on 1FEB from Hong Kong, she had no symptoms for the 2 weeks at sea. Shows that it's not an exact science. Or she caught the virus in Malaysia (or Cambodia)

Exactly right. This story is an example of clickbait in mainstream media. Sensationalist journalism, with only half the info, or burying the info in the last paragraph after you announced the sky is falling.

 

[Starwind]

But at least that's a functional quarantine.

And this is not a functional quarantine.

Don't they say that "Insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results"? This is insanity, everyone needs to come off of there. Other countries need to step up and help or Japan will have a couple thousand cases of COVID19 to tend to. What a nightmare.

Will the 14 days in the US be all that different than on the ship in real function ? I watched I believe it was a BBC video yesterday about the current group of Wuhan evacuees being quarantened at a US military facility: they are not segregated to their rooms, they are allowed into "public spaces" in the facility for things like meals and exercise activities and just to walk around. So while held as a group, they do not isolate them from each other. From the description they probably have more contact with each other than the people on the ship do. OTOH, they CAN do those things and aren't restricted to a cabin going stir-crazy... trade-offs.

It seems for the ship each time they test a new cohort of people they find a chunk of them are infected. So this group of 67 comes out of the 80 and over or the 70 and over cohort plus inside cabins people they just tested. I don't know that it necessarily means that you're looking at "new" cases, just previously undiscovered cases, though the when/how specific people got infected they may never figure out.

Although they have a resource issue, it seems they should really just test everyone left on the ship and find out once and for all how many are infected as of that date per that round of tests [understanding that false negatives are apparently an issue for the testing]. From what we have seen from the previous rounds of testing, one would expect probably hundreds more cases would turn up if they do that.

 

[Dreams&wishes]

There are. Most of the rest of the world is not banning travel to/from China, and some airlines are still willing to fly those routes.

Most of the experts seem to think that the "long incubation period" is really just that the patient was exposed more recently, but didn't know it. As @Karin1984 mentioned, she could have picked it up in Malaysia. That's actually pretty likely. Malaysia has a lot of cases for a country their size and not great public health infrastructure to track it. They get many travelers from China, too.

But the cruise docked yesterday in Cambodia if they caught it yesterday or today that would have been a too short incubation time?

 

[QueenElinor]

Will the 14 days in the US be all that different than on the ship in real function ? I watched I believe it was a BBC video yesterday about the current group of Wuhan evacuees being quarantened at a US military facility: they are not segregated to their rooms, they are allowed into "public spaces" in the facility for things like meals and exercise activities and just to walk around. So while held as a group, they do not isolate them from each other. From the description they probably have more contact with each other than the people on the ship do. OTOH, they CAN do those things and aren't restricted to a cabin going stir-crazy... trade-offs.

Yes, it's a functional quarantine. We know this because in the first group of evacuees they were evaluated before they went into quarantine, spent 14 days there and no one got sick, and were released. In the second group two got sick, but were infected before the quarantine, and they didn't spread it (as far as we know, because testing mistakes were made). So the outcomes here are very different than what happened on the ship.

The variable here is THE SHIP. There's something about it that helps disseminate the virus. They don't know what it is or they'd put a stop to it. Also, those passengers were not adequately screened before the start of the quarantine. And they had crew, who are untrained in infection precautions, helping the passengers. So there are lots of reasons why that quarantine failed, but quarantines on the military bases probably won't.

 

[Starwind]

From a previous media article:

"About 80 percent of the ship passengers were age 60 or over, with 215 in their 80s and 11 in their 90s, according to media."

So 226 age 80 and over. Possiby some had previously been removed for medical or coronavirus reasons, but lets go with the 226. Plus some unknown number who are in inside cabins. We know that was the first recent tranche of testing they did.

After that round they then then went and tested the 70 and overs.

So the 67 cases are out of how many people tested ?

 

[Starwind]

Yes, it's a functional quarantine. We know this because in the first group of evacuees they were evaluated before they went into quarantine, spent 14 days there and no one got sick, and were released. In the second group two got sick, but were infected before the quarantine, and they didn't spread it (as far as we know, because testing mistakes were made). So the outcomes here are very different than what happened on the ship.

The variable here is THE SHIP. There's something about it that helps disseminate the virus. They don't know what it is or they'd put a stop to it. Also, those passengers were not adequately screened before the start of the quarantine.

Some food for thought; bold added by me to highlight the numbers; article as a whole worth a read.

https://time.com/5781629/japan-cruise-ship-quarantine/
QUOTE

The Diamond Princess has been stuck in the Yokohama harbor since Feb. 3, after the cruise company learned a passenger from Hong Kong had tested positive for the new coronavirus after disembarking last month. On Thursday, Princess Cruises confirmed another 44 coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of infections to 218, accounting for more than one third of all cases detected outside mainland China. Japanese authorities said only 336 passengers had been tested as of Monday, according to the Japan Times. Health officials say one quarantined officer also tested positive for the disease, the Times reported. With nearly 6% of the 3,711 passengers and crew members now infected, the 952-foot cruise ship also has the highest infection rate of the coronavirus anywhere in the world.

“There is now ample evidence that this (quarantine) is not preventing the spread of cases within the ship and it is also is posing a risk of spread within the ship,” Tom Inglesby, an infectious diseases expert and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, tells TIME.

END QUOTE

 

[Starwind]

Numbers for the 67...

Source: https://www.hindustantimes.com/worl...an-minister/story-XA82lXYFDzIoEsJLl8HoHP.html

QUOTE (bold added)

Another 67 people on board a cruise ship quarantined off Japan’s coast have tested positive for the new coronavirus, the country’s health minister said on Saturday.

The new cases, from 217 tests, bring the number of people diagnosed on the Diamond Princess to 285, excluding a quarantine officer who also contracted the illness.

END QUOTE

(note that 217 tests could mean 217 "new" people tested or some could be the same person being tested again)

 

[GlamMistress]

But the cruise docked yesterday in Cambodia if they caught it yesterday or today that would have been a too short incubation time?

Right. COVID19 could have hit this poor woman like a lightning bolt, but it still needed SOME time to incubate, then cause sickness.

I hope HAL has a way to track everyone they put on flights home yesterday. What a nightmare.

 

[Starwind]

Right. COVID19 could have hit this poor woman like a lightning bolt, but it still needed SOME time to incubate, then cause sickness.

I hope HAL has a way to track everyone they put on flights home yesterday. What a nightmare.

Per CDC's latest update: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/symptoms.html

" CDC believes at this time that symptoms of 2019-nCoV may appear in as few as 2 days or as long as 14 after exposure. This is based on what has been seen previously as the incubation period of MERS viruses. "

Also https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/faq.html :

Q: When is someone infectious?

A: The onset and duration of viral shedding and period of infectiousness for 2019-nCoV infection are not yet known. It is possible that 2019-nCoV RNA may be detectable in the upper or lower respiratory tract for weeks after illness onset, similar to infection with MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV. However, detection of viral RNA does not necessarily mean that infectious virus is present. Asymptomatic infection with 2019-nCoV has been reported, but it is not yet known what role asymptomatic infection plays in transmission. Similarly, the role of pre-symptomatic transmission (infection detection during the incubation period prior to illness onset) is unknown. Existing literature regarding 2019-nCoV and other coronaviruses (e.g. MERS-CoV, SARS-CoV) suggest that the incubation period may range from 2–14 days.

 

[QueenElinor]

.....
I hope HAL has a way to track everyone they put on flights home yesterday. What a nightmare.

I hope they're faxing the ship's manifest to the CDC as we speak.

 

[Karin1984]

Right. COVID19 could have hit this poor woman like a lightning bolt, but it still needed SOME time to incubate, then cause sickness.

I hope HAL has a way to track everyone they put on flights home yesterday. What a nightmare.

A Dutch newspaper just published an article that people get stuck at the airport in Cambodia as there aren't many flights. A Dutch couple has flights from Kuala Lumpur to Dubai to Amsterdam, but getting to Kuala Lumpur is an issue. Also issues with visa etc. They are now talking about charter flights, but as they are already through customs/security, they have to stay there.

 

[MarkLT1]

I hope they're faxing the ship's manifest to the CDC as we speak.

Or even email it..

 

[Dreams&wishes]

A Dutch newspaper just published an article that people get stuck at the airport in Cambodia as there aren't many flights. A Dutch couple has flights from Kuala Lumpur to Dubai to Amsterdam, but getting to Kuala Lumpur is an issue. Also issues with visa etc. They are now talking about charter flights, but as they are already through customs/security, they have to stay there.

I mean getting sick and stuck in Japan is something... But being sick and stuck in Cambodia is a totally different level of nightmare!

 

[QueenElinor]

Or even email it..

Haha, possibly. But we don't ever email protected health info at work, since fax is more secure and less likely to get lost. It's my natural default, even if it's old-fashioned.

 

[MarkLT1]

Well then.. Clearly HAL should be emailing a secure link to the passenger manifest portal page, where there may or may not be a note of significance from the on-board doctor along with some random unrelated test results that no one understands.

 

[QueenElinor]

Well then.. Clearly HAL should be emailing a secure link to the passenger manifest portal page, where there may or may not be a note of significance from the on-board doctor along with some random unrelated test results that no one understands.

Now THAT'S modern medicine!