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After days at sea and amid rising panic over coronavirus, the Grand Princess cruise ship finally docked at the Port of Oakland on Monday.
The arrival marks the end of days of anxious limbo — and the beginning of an extensive operation to remove the more than 2,000 passengers from the coronavirus-stricken ship and transfer them to quarantine facilities to be tested for the virus.
“It’s kind of like the end of one chapter, the beginning of the next,” said passenger Kristian Riese, a 47-year-old pilot who lives in Guam. “You don’t know how it’s going to end up.”
The ship’s arrival came as public health officials warned that the spread of disease was unlikely to slow in the United States. Shortly after the ship finally came to rest, the Bay Area reported its first death from the illness, raising the number of coronavirus-related deaths in California toll to two.
The patient — a Santa Clara County woman in her 60s who had been hospitalized for several weeks before dying Monday morning at El Camino Hospital — had been the county’s third confirmed coronavirus case and its first patient thought to have contracted the illness from “community spread” — meaning that she had not recently traveled internationally nor been in contact with a person who had a confirmed case of the virus.
“This is a tragic development,” Sara Cody, the county’s health officer, said. “We are facing a historic public health challenge and know this is a very difficult time. Our top priority continues to be protecting the health of our community.”
State officials said Monday that the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in California has reached 133, including five newly discovered cases each in San Francisco, Santa Clara, Contra Costa counties. Nationwide, there are now 605 confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S., and 22 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins.
As the number of cases grows and fears continue to mount, the impact of the virus on day-to-day life in the Bay Area has deepened. On Monday night, Santa Clara County announced that it would implement a mandatory ban on all large gatherings beginning Wednesday.
The ban is set to last through March, officials said, and applies to any event with more than 1,000 attendees.
A much-anticipated arrival
Meanwhile, the Grand Princess was finally allowed to dock Monday after days of sailing in circles off the coast of Northern California while state and local officials tried to find a suitable port to offload the more than 2,500 passengers and test them for the coronavirus. Twenty-one people on the boat, including 19 crew members and two passengers, have tested positive for the virus, which killed a 71-year-old passenger who had been on the ship’s previous trip.
That man’s death, California’s first recorded coronavirus fatality, had prompted the cancellation of the Grand Princess’ final stop in Ensenada, Mexico, and sparked the beginning of the high-stakes disembarkation operation that culminated its first stage Monday.
As the ship finally entered the Port of Oakland at about noon on Monday, cheers could be heard from the balconies, as passengers celebrated their anticipated return home. One person walked along the top deck, waving what appeared to be a white handkerchief.
Workers in full hazmat suits were seen preparing the docking area in front of beige tents nearby, along with what appeared to be tour buses. Authorities had fenced in an 11-acre site in the port Sunday that would serve as the center of operations, sealing off the location in an effort to prevent the potential spread of the virus in the surrounding community.
Passengers in need of medical support or hospitalization were scheduled to disembark first, along with those who are symptomatic or tested positive for coronavirus. By about 2 p.m. Monday, about a half dozen ambulances pulled into the fenced-off area of the port and were loaded with passengers apparently in need of medical treatment.
“Of the people who contracted the virus, 21 in all, we are dealing with them in proper isolation,” Vice President Mike Pence said in a Monday afternoon press conference.
By the early evening, busloads of passengers began to arrive at Oakland’s North Field air strip, where they were set to board chartered planes. It was not clear where the planes Monday were headed. A Customs and Border Patrol spokesperson said Monday that all planned flights servicing Grand Princess passengers were traveling domestically.
State officials have said that California residents who were on the cruise will be taken to Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego, while those from outside of the state will be quarantined at U.S. military bases in Texas and Georgia.
The U.S. is also making arrangements with Canada, the United Kingdom and other nations to repatriate foreign nationals who were on the cruise, Pence said. The ship is expected to leave the Port of Oakland after disembarking all of the passengers, which officials anticipated would take up to three days.
Crew members will remain quarantined on the vessel, public health officials said, though it is not clear where the boat will go once it leaves the San Francisco Bay. Plans for the crew quarantine were “still being determined” as of late Sunday, according to cruise operator Princess Cruises.
Port officials weren’t expecting any impact on port operations, Port of Oakland spokesperson Mike Zampa said Monday, noting that the area surrounding the offloading site is mostly used for short-term cargo storage and truck parking.
Bill Aboudi, president of the transport company Oakland Port Services Corporation, said business at the port has already been slow, so he hasn’t witnessed a logistical impact from the arrival or preparation of the ship. But, he added truck drivers are operating just a few hundred yards from the dock, and some have been concerned by what he described as a lack of communication about the Grand Princess operation.
“We haven’t heard anything or received any information,” he said. “We want more info.”
Without direction from the port about how to handle — or avoid — the ship, he said, “drivers get scared.”
Staff writers David Debolt and Lisa Krieger contributed to this report.
