Video: Helicopter arrives on Grand Princess cruise with coronavirus testing kits.
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The coronavirus outbreak’s Bay Area impact intensified Thursday as a cruise ship sailed toward San Francisco bearing 2,500 potentially exposed passengers while new infections surfaced ashore, some schools closed and health officials said large events should cancel.
In a dramatic scene captured by passengers, helicopters delivered test kits for the life-threatening disease known as COVID-19 to the Grand Princess cruise ship off the California coast so those with symptoms could be tested while still at sea. But it was unclear what would happen to passengers, infected or not, once the ship makes land.
In an update to the Grand Princess’ passengers shared on social media, the captain said that by the end of Thursday, all samples should have been collected and sent to labs in the Bay Area, with results expected early Friday morning. The captain said the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “recommended that guests should remain in their staterooms for the remainder of the cruise,” with meals delivered to their rooms.
“We know that this will be disappointing to hear,” the captain said. “However, after lunch today we ask that you return to your staterooms until we are advised further by the CDC.”
The cruise line said Wednesday that there were no confirmed COVID-19 cases aboard and indicated that fewer than 100 of its 2,500 passengers and crew would be tested.
Those include all passengers who had sailed the previous Mexico voyage and remained on board for the current Hawaii trip, passengers and crew who have experienced influenza-like illness and those currently under care for respiratory illness. Eleven passengers and 10 crew members have shown possible signs of the virus, although many more could be exposed.
Lawmakers in Washington raised questions about the adequacy of the testing and the country’s preparedness to deal with such a scenario.
At a hearing on Capitol Hill about the federal response to the novel coronavirus, Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) asked why the passengers on the Grand Princess were being held offshore in a closed environment, where the virus could spread.
“We determined, I thought, that it wasn’t a good idea if there was a positive result on a cruise ship to keep everybody on that cruise ship together,” Hassan told acting deputy secretary of homeland security Ken Cuccinelli, who testified at the hearing. “Now we’re hearing that there is a cruise ship off California, and yet we don’t seem to have a protocol to get those folks off the ship, into quarantine in a way that would minimize the spread of infection.”
The ship’s arrival evoked the plight of another Princess Cruise Lines ship in Japan last month, where infections spread among Diamond Princess passengers kept aboard for weeks after a Hong Kong man who had been aboard tested positive.
State officials and the cruise line said Grand Princess passengers will not be allowed to disembark until test results are in but wouldn’t say what would happen to passengers after test results arrive.
The concern over the Grand Princess surfaced Wednesday after Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that California’s first COVID-19 fatality involved an elderly man who had been aboard the ship on its last voyage to Mexico. That trip began in San Francisco on Feb. 11 and ended on Feb. 21.
Three passengers who were on the Grand Princess’ previous Mexico trip are confirmed to have been infected, including the Rocklin man whose death was announced Wednesday and a friend of his from Sonoma County who now is hospitalized.
In Sunnyvale, a disturbing scenario unfolded as police officers performed CPR on a 72-year-old man who was unconscious and not breathing.
“Unfortunately, the patient didn’t survive,” according to a tweet from Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety on Thursday. “It was later learned the patient had recently been on a cruise with two passengers were suspected of having COVID19.”
Sonoma County authorities Thursday confirmed that its second positive case was a resident who had traveled on the Grand Princess from San Francisco to Mexico and said both county residents are in isolation rooms at a local hospital. The CDC will conduct another test to confirm the diagnosis.
The Sunnyvale death followed the news of new confirmed cases of coronavirus in the Bay Area, including six in Santa Clara County — bringing the county’s total to 20 — as well as two in San Francisco and a second in Sonoma County.
Santa Clara County officials Thursday took the extraordinary step of recommending that large public events such sports games and concerts where people are within arm’s length of one another cancel, and asked businesses not to hold large meetings. Both the San Jose Sharks and Cinequest film festival declined Thursday to cancel upcoming events.
“We will be evaluating further upcoming events in the coming days,” Sharks Sports and Entertainment said. Cinequest said “the festival is going forward” unless the San Jose mayor suggests otherwise.
In San Francisco, both new cases involved residents with no known exposure risk, suggesting the disease is circulating in the community.
“We have been increasing resources and staffing to prepare for the community spread of this virus,” Mayor London Breed said, “and we will do everything we can to protect public health.”
According to the World Health Organization, more than 95,000 people in 85 countries have been infected since the coronavirus outbreak began in China in December, and more than 3,200 have died. Most of the infections and deaths have been in China, but there are now more than 14,700 cases in other countries and more than 250 deaths, with South Korea, Italy and Iran hardest hit.
There are now more than 100 U.S. cases including 56 in California, and 12 deaths, 11 of which were recorded in Washington state.
Sonoma County authorities said Thursday that they have received a list of county residents who were on the Grand Princess Cruise and the shuttle to and from the ship and are contacting passengers to make them aware.
Meanwhile, aboard the Grand Princess, two women who say they are passengers on the ill-fated cruise ship put a video on YouTube in which they ponder their fate.
“Who’s to say who I’ve been standing next to?” one of them says in the video as her companion coughs — they say they have been sick, “but not with that!”
“There has to be something happening when we come into port,” one of the women said. “Are they just going to let us go? We don’t know. … There’s just a lot of confusion aboard.”
“Hopefully they’ve learned a lot from their experience with the Diamond Princess,” the other woman said.
Staff Writer Lisa Krieger contributed to this report.
