Nineteen crew members, two passengers on Grand Princess cruise ship test positive for coronavirus

Horrified passengers only learned that nineteen crew members and two tourists aboard Grand Princess cruise ship had tested positive for coronavirus when Mike Pence announced the cases at his press conference. 

Forty-six people on board were swabbed and 21 of them tested positive, Vice President Mike Pence revealed in a White House press conference Friday. 

News of the outbreak came as two more deaths were announced in the US Friday night, both in Florida, taking the US total to 17.

The ship has been kept in a holding pattern in the Pacific Ocean off San Francisco for nearly two days and will now move on to a ‘non commercial port’ where all the 3,500 passengers and crew members will be unloaded and tested.  

Friday’s test results come amid evidence the vessel was the breeding ground for a deadly cluster of at least ten cases during its previous voyage. 

The news came as a shock to many passengers who only found out about the positive test results from Pence’s press briefing, a passenger told CNN via video call. 

‘We apologize but we were not given advance notice of this announcement by the US federal government,’ the ship’s announcement broadcast was heard in the video. ‘It would have been our preference to be the first to make this news available to you.’ 

Another distressed passenger, 17-year-old Kailee Higgins Ott, who is on the cruise with her mother, Leeann Higgins, told how they just happened to find out about the outbreak while watching CNN in their room. 

She had told USA Today just hours earlier that they had been told to stay in their rooms while people were waiting for coronavirus test results

‘We were just informed that after lunch time we need to stay in our rooms until we get the test results. The tests should be finished in about 4-6 hours and we will know results in the morning,’ she said Thursday.

One angry passenger blasted President Trump’s comments that he would rather keep everyone on board the ship to make US numbers around the outbreak look better. 

‘He’s more than welcome to come onto the ship with us and serve us our dinners and bring me my towels,’ Debbie Loftus, an American quarantined on the cruise ship with her elderly parents. 

She also voiced concerns that such a move would risk a repeat of the disastrous quarantine on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship off Japan, which ultimately saw 700 infected and six die. 

‘Does he not realize what happened on the Diamond Princess when they did that?’ she said, in a video interview with CNN from her cabin.  

The Grand Princess cruise ship, with some 3,500 people on board, will now not dock in San Francisco but was instead ordered to stay at sea Wednesday evening after several dozen people on board began to show symptoms. 

The outbreak on board the Grand Princess cruise ship came as: 

• Trump signed an $8.3 billion measure to combat the coronavirus outbreak Friday
• The president said ‘anyone who wants a test can get a test’ – despite shortages 
• New York state confirmed 11 new cases Friday, taking its total to 44 
• Silicon Valley continues to close its doors as major tech hubs of California and Seattle increasingly become virus hotspots 
• Apple told all 12,000 employees at its headquarters Apple Park to remain home Friday, following similar guidance from Facebook and Microsoft 
• Amazon and Facebook both have employees with the disease in Seattle 
• Officials in Austin announced that South by South West festival will be canceled 
• Most US cases have been linked to the Life Care Center nursing facility in Kirkland, near Seattle, which nine deaths are linked to 
• It emerged that three days before the first cases were confirmed, the facility held a ‘germ-fest’ party meaning the spread could be far wider than thought

Pence said the federal government is working with California officials on a plan to bring the ship to a non-commercial port this weekend and the 2,300 passengers, mostly Americans, and another 1,000 crew members, will be tested for the virus.

‘We have been in discussion with Gov. (Gavin) Newsom,’ Pence said. 

Federal officials have been working with the state and ‘we have developed a plan to bring the ship to a non-commercial port,’ he added.

‘All passengers and crew will be tested for the virus. Those that will need to be quarantined will be quarantined. Those who will require medical help will receive it.’

‘The general risk to the American public remains low,’ Pence said but added that elderly Americans and those with pre-existing conditions should use caution, especially when traveling. 

Confined to their cabins, passengers aboard a mammoth cruise ship off the California coast awaited coronavirus test results Friday amid evidence the vessel was the breeding ground for a deadly cluster of at least 10 cases during its previous voyage. 

On Thursday, a military helicopter crew lowered test kits onto the 951-foot (290-meter) Grand Princess by rope and later retrieved them for analysis as the vessel waited off San Francisco, under orders to keep its distance from shore.

Princess Cruises said 46 of the more than 3,500 people on board were tested and results revealed Friday that 21 of them tested positive. 

Twenty-four others tested negative while one test was inconclusive. 

On Friday, President Trump claimed that he would prefer the passengers and crew to remain on the ship so they don’t add to the rising American cases. 

‘I have great experts, including our vice president, who’s working 24 hours a day on this stuff,’ Trump told reporters. 

‘They would like to have the people come off, I’d rather have the people stay. But I’d go with them. I told them to make the final decision.’ 

‘I like the numbers being where they are. 

‘I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault. And it wasn’t the fault of the people on the ship either.

‘I can live either way with it,’ he continued. 

‘I’d rather have them stay on, personally. But I fully understand if they want to take them off. I gave them the authority to make the decision’

The US’s handling of the cruise ship outbreak has come under fire after the 3,500 people on board – including the captain – were kept in the dark over the confirmed cases until Pence told reporters at the Friday press conference. 

Loftus spoke of the outrage among passengers that not even the captain was told in advance of the now-confirmed outbreak. 

‘We were watching NBC and we heard it and were like excuse me, the passengers were supposed to be notified first,’ she told CNN.

‘I immediately called down to passenger services and said you better get the captain aware of what’s going on and get on the intercom.

‘And he did come on about 10 minutes later but the fact that we weren’t told first made us quite upset and angry.’

‘There’s no excuse for this,’ she added. 

The concerned passenger said they have no idea how dangerous the situation is. 

‘We have absolutely no idea except that they are going to be testing every single person on the boat otherwise we have no idea,’ she said.

But she added that it is ‘in all likelihood’ that her and her parents – who are in their 80s – will have come into contact with the infected crew members.  

‘We have no idea what role they had on the ship so we don’t have enough information right now.’ 

Loftus said she is worried about her parents, given the higher risk of the infection among older people. 

‘If they were to get sick then I’d be extremely concerned,’ she said. 

The testing began after it was reported that a passenger on a previous voyage of the ship, in February, died of the disease.

In the past few days, health authorities disclosed that at least nine other people who were on the same journey were also found to be infected. And some passengers on that trip stayed aboard for the current voyage.

The only people tested were those who were showing symptoms or who had been on the previous trip.  

‘The ship will not come on shore until we appropriately assess the passengers,’ California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday. 

The ship off California was returning to San Francisco after visiting Hawaii.

A Sacramento-area man who sailed aboard the Grand Princess last month during a visit to a series of Mexican ports later succumbed to the coronavirus, according to California authorities. 

Others who were on that voyage have also tested positive, with seven cases in Northern California and two in Canada, authorities said.

However, Mexico’s top epidemiologist denied that the passenger who died in California was on a ship that visited Mexican ports. Dr. José Luis Alomía Zegarra said the man was on a different cruise that did not stop in Mexico.

Three dozen passengers on the Grand Princess have had flu-like symptoms over the past two weeks or so, said Mary Ellen Carroll, executive director of San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management.

An epidemiologist who studies the spread of virus particles said the recirculated air from a cruise ship’s ventilation system, plus the close quarters and communal settings, make passengers vulnerable to infectious diseases. 

‘They´re not designed as quarantine facilities, to put it mildly,’ said Don Milton of the University of Maryland. 

‘You´re going to amplify the infection by keeping people on the boat.

‘My advice is to get people off and into a safer quarantine environment than a cruise ship,’ Milton said.

Michele Smith, a Grand Princess passenger, posted a video on Facebook of the helicopter that arrived at the ship. Another video showed a crew member wearing gloves and a mask and spraying and wiping a handrail.

‘We have crews constantly cleaning our ship,’ Smith was heard saying.

In a post, Smith said she and her husband were not quarantined and were told that only the people who had been on the Mexico voyage or those showing flu-like symptoms had to isolate themselves.

‘Spirits are as high as can be under these circumstances. We are blessed to be healthy, comfortable and well-fed,’ she wrote. 

Meanwhile, the US death toll from the coronavirus climbed to 17, with all but three victims in Washington state, while the number of infections swelled to around 300, scattered across about half the states.  

The latest two deaths were in Lee County and Santa Rosa County, Florida.

President Donald Trump has signed an $8.3 billion measure to help public health agencies deal with crisis and spur development of vaccines and treatments.

Worldwide, the virus has infected more than 100,000 people and killed over 3,400, the vast majority of them in China. Most cases have been mild, and more than half of those infected have recovered. 

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TRUMP CLAIMS ‘ANYBODY WHO WANTS A TEST CAN GET A TEST’ AS HE COMMITS $8.3 BILLION TO TACKLING CRISIS   

President Donald Trump plunged coronavirus testing into chaos Friday when he announced that ‘anybody who wants a test can get a test’ during a rambling press conference Friday.

The president brushed off concerns about the limited number of coronavirus test kits during a visit to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta Friday.

He left officials scrambling to explain how such a commitment could happen after free-wheeling press availability where he publicly disagreed with his own government’s approach to the cruise ship, referenced impeachment, asked about TV ratings, and called a Democratic government ‘a snake.’

‘The tests are beautiful,’ Trump added after meeting with top U.S. scientists amid the coronavirus outbreak.

‘Anybody who right now and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test,’ Trump said.

Trump praised his own administration’s response amid concerns that the million test kits promised had yet to materialize.

‘We’ve done a tremendous job at keeping it down,’ he said.

And Trump shared his misgivings about providing on-shore medical treatment to passengers of a Princess cruise liner off the coast of San Francisco. He raised concerns it would spike the numbers of infected Americans.

‘I like the numbers where they are. I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship. That wasn’t our fault,’ Trump said.

The president during his trip to the CDC called Washington State Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee a ‘snake.’ He also appeared to criticize Pence’s approach.

‘Oh I told Mike not to be complimentary … that governor is a snake. I said if you’re nice to him he will take advantage,’ Trump said. ‘We have a lot of problems with the governor, the governor of Washington,’ he said, adding: ‘Mike may be happy with him but I’m not.’

Inslee, who ran for president this year and is overseeing an outbreak in his state, had tweeted last week that he told Pence their work would be more successful if the administration ‘stuck to the science and told the truth.’

Trump submitted to a series of questions from reporters at the CDC, where his comments veered to his appearance Thursday night at a Fox News town hall. He brought up his appearance on ‘a very fine network known as Fox News. How was the show last night? Did it get good ratings, by the way?’ he asked.

Trump, who wore his signature red ‘Make America Great’ hat during the briefing about the response to the potential pandemic, swerved between the coronavirus issue and his political grievances.

He also invoked his own uncle, Dr. John Trump, in explaining his aptitude for dealing with the issue. ‘I like this stuff. I really get it,’ Trump said.

‘The general risk to the American public remains low,’ Pence told reporters in the White House briefing room.

‘It is a good time for any American who is elderly … and has a serious underlying health condition to think carefully about travel,’ he said.

The president’s visit to the Centers for Disease Control was in question earlier in th day – after abruptly taking the visit off his schedule over a person at the CDC who was being tested for the disease.

Trump told reporters Friday morning the trip got scrapped or postponed because a person at the government facility was being tested for the virus that has now resulted in the deaths of 17 Americans.

But a few hours later, the White House backpedaled on plans and included a flight to Atlanta and the CDC in the president’s official schedule.

Trump also signed a bill allocating $8.3 billion to combat the outbreak.

The funding measure provides money for public health agencies for tests, vaccines and other treatments. It will also provide money to state and local governments to respond to the epidemic.

The House passed the legislation Wednesday and the Senate did so on Thursday, a rapid response to increased public fears about the disease, which has disrupted schools, airlines, and spring break plans.

The measure more than triples the $2.5 billion amount outlined by the White House last month, which Democrats criticized as too little, too late.

A group of lawmakers from both parties negotiated the increased figure and other provisions in the measure in a rare sign of bipartisanship.

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BLOW FOR WORLD’S BIGGEST TECH FIRMS AS SILICON VALLEY SHUTS ITS DOORS AND SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST FESTIVAL IS AXED 

The world’s tech giants have been dealt a major blow from the coronavirus crisis as Silicon Valley continues to shut its doors and South by Southwest Festival is cancelled.

On Friday, Apple became the latest Silicon Valley firm to advise its workers to stay away in coronavirus-hit California.

Apple advised all 12,000 employees at its Cupertino headquarters to work from home amid heightened coronavirus concerns as the death toll in the US continued to rise.

In a memo seen by DailyMail.com and issued to all staff at the Santa Clara Valley offices named Apple Park, employees were told that the precaution was being taken following recent guidance from public health officials. 

Staff were advised that offices would remain open but that they were ‘encouraging team members’ to stay away despite only sending the email when many would already be traveling to work.

Apple joined Facebook and Microsoft in introducing new policies to stop the spread of the deadly coronavirus this week.

An estimated 83,000 workers are affected by the closures and work-from-home policies within these three companies alone.

Facebook also told employees in its San Francisco Bay offices to stay at home on Friday and cancel all business trips due to the virus. The company is believed to have around 14,000 employees in the Bay Area.

The social network is also cancelling any events in the Bay Area.

Facebook already announced Wednesday night that it has closed its Seattle office after a contractor there was discovered to have contracted the virus. Between the San Francisco and Seattle closures, around 17,000 employee of the company are estimated to be working from home.

The office will be closed until at least Monday, March 9, and the company is encouraging its employees to work from home for the remainder of the month.

Amazon confirmed late Tuesday that one of its employees in Seattle had tested positive for coronavirus after going home sick from work on February 25. An Amazon spokeperson told DailyMail.com: ‘We’re supporting the affected employee who is in quarantine.’

Amazon has more than 50,000 employees in Seattle and more than 275,000 full-time workers across the U.S. Last week, Amazon became one of the first U.S. companies to crack down on employee travel due to the outbreak, banning all ‘non-essential’ work trips.

Meanwhile, Google is asking employees in Washington state who can work from home to do so. It has more than 4,500 employees in Seattle.

Microsoft has already asked its employees in its San Francisco Bay and Seattle HQ offices to work from home if they can do so to restrict the spread of the virus.

The company has over 80,000 employees in the US, 54,000 of whom are based in the Washington state Redmond campus.

The company has committed to continue to pay its workers who are paid by the hour during the outbreak even if they can’t come to work.

Ride-sharing service Lyft said it encouraged its San Francisco staff to work from home for the remainder of the week after it learned one of its employees was in contact with someone who was exposed to COVID-19.

Global employer Twitter this week also told all 5,000 of its workers around the world to work from home because of the outbreak.

Meanwhile, officials canceled the South by Southwest festival that was set to take place in Austin, Texas, over coronavirus fears.

Austin Mayor Steve Adler said on Friday he was issuing a state of emergency that effectively canceled the event, based on the recommendation of public health officials.

The festival, known as SXSW – set to take place between March 13 and March 22 – brings together the world’s biggest tech firms.

Several major companies including Amazon Studios, Netflix, Facebook and Twitter had already pulled out of the festival.

No cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in Austin however, more than 50,000 people had signed a petition seeking to get the festival cancelled, amid concerns that it draws an international audience into close quarters, posing a serious threat of contagion.

Many attendees flock from the virus hotspots of California and Seattle.

All told, the economic cost of tech events cancelled due to coronavirus has surpassed $1 billion, according to an estimate from ReCode.

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NY GOVERNOR ANDREW CUOMO BLASTS CDC AND ‘BAD GOVERNMENT’ AS NY CASES RISE TO 44

The number of people who have tested positive for coronavirus in New York state has risen to 44 as at least 4,000 people have been urged to self-quarantine to prevent the spread of the disease.

In a press conference on Friday, Governer Andrew Cuomo said that ‘most’ of the cases are linked to a Manhattan lawyer who tested positive earlier in the week.

There are now 33 cases in Westchester County, five in New York City, four in Nassau County and two in Rockland County.

Details of all the new cases were not immediately clear, but Cuomo said there were ‘a number of young people’ and he suspects ‘they are related to existing cases.

At least five people have been hospitalized across the state.

Cuomo blasted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Trump administration over their mixed messages regarding coronvirus testing.

Cuomo cited the contradictory statements issued by the federal health agency and Vice President Mike Pence.

‘I don’t understand CDC’s instructions, they say anyone can get tested if they want…but Pence says we don’t have enough tests,’ Cuomo told reporters.

‘How can you bring in more people into the pipeline than you can address at the end of the pipeline?’ he said.

‘That is not only bad government and poor planning, it will increase the fear.’

It comes just hours after Dr Anthony Fauci, a top official at the NIH, said he can’t make any promises about when enough test kits will be made available. 

Cuomo argued that people will be fearful because they won’t understand why doctors don’t have the capacity to test them.

‘Their position is absurd and nonsensical,’ the governor said.

‘I think the anxiety and the fear is a bigger problem than the virus.’

Cuomo also lamented that CDC and FDA were slow in approving New York’s use of private labs as well as giving New York State’s Wadsworth Lab And NYC’s Public-Health Lab permission to test for the virus.

His comments came hours after Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the goal in the next few weeks to have more than a million tests ready but that he couldn’t guarantee it.

It echoed comments made by Vice President Mike Pence at a press conference on Thursday admitted that there is a shortage of test kits, which currently cannot meet demand.

‘I can’t guarantee that, that’s an issue that would have to go through the FDA and the companies to see if that’s available,’ Dr Fauci told TODAY.

‘So I cannot promise it but that’s what the goal is – within the next couple of weeks – to get the million plus [out].’

It is believed one of the chemicals used in the test did not work properly, resulting in the test needing to be remanufactured.

Another issue was that the CDC initially set narrow criteria on who could be tested.

At first, only those with a travel history to China – where the outbreak emerged – or those who had been exposed to a confirmed coronavirus patient were tested.

That changed after the first patient of ‘unknown diagnosis’ was confirmed in California, believed to be of so-called community spread.

‘There were certainly some missteps in the beginning regarding getting tests out, some technical issues that slowed down the process,’ Dr Fauci told TODAY.

‘The Vice President was absolutely correct. There has been a delay and we didn’t have enough right now but, hopefully, in the near future hopefully we will.’

The CDC and other health officials have come under fire for how slowly Americans are being tested.

‘I’m not happy about the lack of the appropriate number of test kits – that’s for sure – but other areas of the response, I think, are going well,’ Dr Fauci said.

Heath and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar explained on Thursday the three steps that stand in the way to broader, faster testing.

He said that even when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) itself developed a test, it had to get approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before distributing it.

That request was submitted February 3 and approved February 4. The CDC didn’t start shipping its first batch of tests until February 6.

Dr Fauci said he’s also frustrated at the lack of screenings at US airports.

In a press conference on Monday evening, Pence said there will be 100 percent screening at all airports with direct flights from Italy and South Korea over the next 12 hours.

However, Vice News producer Julia Lindau said she did not undergo any health screenings or additional questioning after landing at John F Kennedy International Airport in New York from Italy on Thursday night.

‘I just landed at JFK after reporting on #coronavirus in Milan and Lombardy – the epicenter of Italy’s outbreak – for @vicenews,’ she tweeted.

‘I walked right through US customs. They didn’t ask me where in Italy I went or if I came into contact with sick people. They didn’t ask me anything.’