Grand Princess DOCKS in Oakland with at least 21 people aboard infected with coronavirus

The first coronavirus-infected passengers aboard the quarantined Grand Princess cruise ship were finally removed from the liner Monday afternoon with one man seen being taken out in a stretcher. 

The cruise ship carrying 3,500 passengers and crew landed at the Port of Oakland on Monday after five days of being held in limbo in international waters. 

There are at least 21 people infected with coronavirus aboard the ship, that made its way under the Golden Gate bridge Monday morning before docking in Oakland shortly after noon local time. 

Screening tents and doctors in Hazmat suits awaited the 2,421 passengers who cheered as the Grand Princess returned to California 

Around 2.30pm workers in hazmat suits were seen wheeling out a man wearing a medical face mask with his hands calming folded into his hands as he was put into a Santa Clara County ambulance. 

Some of those cruise ship passengers are set be removed from the ship Monday and will be transported to the Dobbins Reserve Air base in Cobb County, Georgia. 

Unloading will take three days officials say, and travelers will be taken to four military bases for quarantine. It’s not clear how many people will be removed on Monday. 

American passengers will be flown or bused from the port to military bases in California, Texas and Georgia for testing and a 14-day quarantine. 

The ship is carrying people from 54 countries including Canada and the UK. Foreigners will be sent home. 

Personnel covered in head to toe in protective gear had earlier woken those on board to check whether they have symptoms of the virus. The vessel, linked to California’s first death from COVID-19 from an earlier voyage to Mexico, had been held at sea for a number of days.

Fences were being installed at an 11-acre site at the Port of Oakland, as authorities readied flights and buses to whisk the 2,421 passengers aboard the Grand Princess to military bases or their home countries for a 14-day quarantine. It will then leave with the remaining 1,094 crew, mostly foreign nationals, quarantined on board.

Passenger Karen Schwartz Dever told NBC: ‘Everyone was hollering and clapping as we entered the harbor.’ Footage shows those on board cheering and shouting ‘thank you’ as the ship docked. 

‘We’re making every effort to get them off the ship as safely and quickly as possible,’ said Dr. John Redd of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, who had urged passengers to remain in their rooms. 

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 On Sunday, the U.S. State Department issued an advisory against travel on cruise ships, particularly for travelers with underlying health conditions. The statement said the CDC noted an ‘increased risk of infection of COVID-19 in a cruise ship environment.’ 

Passengers requiring acute medical attention and hospitalization will be allowed off the Grand Princess first and taken to health care facilities elsewhere in California, as would a relatively limited number of crew expected to need immediate treatment, California Governor Gavin Newsom said.  

The remaining U.S.based passengers will be transferred to one of four quarantine stations set up at military bases in California and elsewhere across the country for diagnostic testing and isolation, officials said.

All will remain under mandatory quarantine for 14 days, the presumed incubation period of the sometimes-deadly respiratory virus, also known as COVID-19, while they are tested and monitored for signs of infection.  

As the U.S. death toll from the virus reached at least 23 and the number of cases worldwide soared above 110,000, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the mayor of Oakland sought to reassure the public that none of the Grand Princess passengers would be exposed to the U.S. public before completing the quarantine. 

To hasten the triage process and minimize how much time the ship needs to remain in Portland, the U.S. Coast Guard was flying special mobile medical teams out to the vessel on Sunday to assess the health of passengers and crew ahead of their arrival, Newsom said.

Passengers who are well and from California – about 1,000 have been identified as state residents – will be taken to either Travis Air Force Base near Sacramento or Marine Corps Air Station Miramar close to San Diego.

Passengers from other states will be transported to either Joint Base San Antonio Lackland in Texas or Dobbins Air Force Base in Georgia. That number was not specified, though at least 34 are from Georgia, according to state officials. 

State and federal authorities has said several hundred cruise passengers of other nationalities have been identified, including Canadians. Newsom said passengers and crew together represent 54 countries. 

Michele Smith, of Paradise, California, said a doctor knocked on her and her husband’s cabin before dawn and asked if they had a fever or a cough. The couple who went on the cruise to celebrate their wedding anniversary are healthy and, like the rest of the 2,400 passengers aboard, have been isolating in their cabins since Thursday. 

The number of infections in the United States climbed above 500 as testing for the virus increased.  The 75-year-old male passenger who traveled on the Grand Princess and died from the virus was infected before he came on board the quarantined vessel, the medical officer on the vessel said Sunday.  

The origins of the infection have left the fate of the ship in question as public health officials deal with a dozen cases of the virus in California linked to passengers who were on board traveling to Mexico last month, including the man who died.

Newsom said public health authorities were monitoring more than 1,500 other California residents who were on that Mexico cruise. 

It comes as The Regal Princess cruise ship pulled into a Florida port late Sunday night, after being held off Florida’s coast for hours while awaiting results for two crew members who eventually tested negative for coronavirus.

The Regal Princess was originally to have docked Sunday morning in Port Everglades but instead spent most of the day sailing up and down the coast. 

The Coast Guard delivered testing kits to the Regal Princess and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a ‘no-sail order’ for the ship.

The crew members in question had transferred more than two weeks ago from the Grand Princess cruise ship. 

A Port of Everglades spokeswoman, Ellen Kennedy, said later Sunday that the CDC had cleared the ship to enter port. 

A Princess Cruises statement issued early Monday said the CDC issued the clearance after the test results came back negative. 

It was later confirmed that two of the presumptive positive cases of coronavirus in Broward County, Florida, are connected to Port Everglades port. It was not clear how the cases are connected to the active cruise ship port.     

The Florida Department of Health has reported 13 cases of coronavirus in the state, including two deaths.  

The Port of Oakland was chosen for docking because of its proximity to an airport and a military base, Newsom said. U.S. passengers will be transported to military bases in California, Texas and Georgia, where they’ll be tested for the COVID-19 virus and quarantined.

‘That ship will turn around – and they are currently assessing appropriate places to bring that quarantined ship – but it will not be here in the San Francisco Bay,’ Newsom said.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the National Institutes of Health’s infectious diseases chief, said Sunday that widespread closure of a city or region, as Italy has done, is ‘possible.’ 

U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said communities will need to start thinking about canceling large gatherings, closing schools and letting more employees work from home, as many companies have done in the Seattle, Washington, area amid an outbreak at a care home that has killed 17.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown declared a state of emergency Sunday because of the virus. 

Princess Cruises, a unit of the world’s leading cruise operator, Carnival Corp, is also owner of the Diamond Princess, which was quarantined off Japan in February and became for a time the largest concentration of coronavirus cases outside of China, where the outbreak originated. 

On the Grand Princess, passengers Steven and Michele Smith of Paradise, California, said they hope their time spent on the ship in quarantine will count toward the 14 days they are expected to isolate themselves. But they said officials have not yet provided an answer.

‘We would love to get credit for the three or four days we’ve spent in our cabin,’ Steven Smith said.

Passenger Margaret Bartlett, 77, told the BBC: ‘The food is rotten and terrible and we have to fight for it. It is not good enough.’

The ship was held off the coast amid evidence it was the breeding ground for a cluster of at least 20 cases from a previous voyage.

Private companies and some public venues in the U.S. have been taking safety measures in an effort to limit the virus’ spread. 

Several universities have begun online-only courses, including the University of Washington, Stanford University and Columbia University. The largest school district in Northern California, with 64,000 students, canceled classes for a week when it was discovered a family in the district was exposed to COVID-19.

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MORE THAN 700 CASES AND SIX DEATHS FROM DIAMOND PRINCESS CRUISE SHIP

In the worst cruise ship crisis so far, 706 people tested positive on the Diamond Princess after Japanese authorities imposed a two-week lockdown in Yokohama.

At least six people have died after they were taken to hospital from the doomed vessel.

Passengers were confined to their cabins during the lockdown but several countries eventually lost patience with Japan and airlifted their citizens home.

Japan was widely criticised for its handling of the ship, with one disease expert saying the quarantine was ‘completely inadequate’ after viewing the conditions on board.

Kentaro Iwata said the situation on board the vessel was worse than outbreaks he had dealt with in the past, such as Ebola in Africa and the 2003 SARS crisis in China.

The Kobe University infectious diseases expert said conditions on the ship were ‘completely chaotic’ and violated quarantine rules.

Japan had initially impounded the ship after a passenger who left the ship in Hong Kong in January subsequently tested positive.

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New York and New Jersey’s Port Authority chief has coronavirus 

The head of New York and New Jersey’s Port Authority, which oversees airports in both states, has tested positive for coronavirus as the number of cases in the state increased to 142 with 19 in New York City.

Rick Cotton – the executive director of the Port Authority – tested positive for coronavirus and was now working from home, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo revealed on Monday.

He said Cotton had been on the ground at airports as he oversaw the Port Authority’s response to the coronavirus outbreak. 

The Port Authority is in charge of all five airports in New York and New Jersey, including JFK, Newark and LaGuardia.

Members of Cotton’s team and senior officials at the Port Authority who may have come into contact with him are now also being tested and are currently in self-quarantine.

Cuomo admitted he could have been in contact with Cotton but said he hadn’t been tested because he is an ‘improbable positive’, which means he is unlikely to have the virus.

The governor implied that Cotton may have been infected at JFK Airport.   

‘He has been at the airports, obviously, when many people were coming back with the virus,’ Cuomo said, adding that it ‘was one of the main airports for people coming in on those overseas flights’.

The Port Authority headquarters is located at 4 World Trade Center in Manhattan, which is a 72-story building that is also occupied by other companies.