Thousands are STILL stuck on the coronavirus-hit Grand Princess 24 hours after docking

Passengers aboard the quarantined Grand Princess cruise ship continued to disembark the liner on Tuesday, a day after it docked in Oakland. 

The evacuation of the 951-foot ship began Monday, with several hundred people let off the ship. About 2,000 passengers, including hundreds of Californians, were still aboard Tuesday morning. 

‘I’m bored and frustrated,’ said Carolyn Wright, 63, of Santa Fe, New Mexico. ‘All of a sudden a two-week vacation has turned into a five-week vacation’. 

The Grand Princess had been held off the coast since Wednesday after at least 21 people tested positive for coronavirus aboard the ship. 

Thousands of increasingly bored and restless passengers are waiting their chance to leave and go to U.S. military bases or back to their home countries for two weeks of quarantine. 

The ship is carrying people from 54 countries including over 200 from Canada and 140 from the UK, all of whom will be repatriated. U.S. passengers will be flown or bused from the port — chosen for its proximity to an airport and a military base — to bases in California, Texas and Georgia for testing and a 14-day quarantine. 

Passenger Donna LaGesse told USA Today on Tuesday: ‘We haven’t received any information. We understand that we are going one of two places probably but we have not received anything in writing or anything like that to say where we’re going or if we’re even leaving today.’

Beryl Ward, 77, of Santa Fe, added: ‘We’re trying to stay calm and we’re trying to stay positive but it’s getting harder and harder. They can’t make up their minds how to keep us safe.’  

Passenger Carolyn Wright said of the evacuation process: ‘They were queuing up the passengers like cattle. Everybody was bunched up. They were physically touching each other and they were backed up along the gangplank.’ 

Wright said she is ‘totally freaked out’ by the idea of getting on the chartered buses, adding: ‘It’s outrageous. If that’s safe, then why were we stuck in our rooms? It’s been stressed for the past five days that we’re not to have any contact with any other passengers?’

One Florida couple who were passengers on the Grand Princess have already sued the ship’s owner for more than $1million for putting the couple’s health at risk, according to a lawsuit filed on Monday. 

Ronald and Eva Weissberger of Broward County, Florida sued Princess Cruise Lines Ltd, a unit of Carnival Corp, alleging the company has caused them emotional distress and trauma as they fear they will develop the COVID-19 disease.

The Grand Princess pulled into the Port of Oakland with more than 3,500 people aboard on Monday. Passengers lining the balconies waved and some left the cabins where they had been in isolation to go on deck. 

As the ship sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge to enter the harbor, passenger Karen Schwartz Dever said ‘everyone was hollering and clapping.’

Twenty-three people who needed acute medical care had been taken off the ship by late Monday afternoon, but it was not clear how many of them had tested positive for the virus, said Brian Ferguson, a spokesman for the California Office of Emergency Services.

Live TV footage showed at least one passenger, an older man wearing a face mask, climbing onto a stretcher and being lifted into the back of an ambulance. Officials have said the unloading will take up to three days.

‘Our intent is to basically disembark about half the passengers today. Everyone will be screened initially today,’ said Robert Kadlec, assistant secretary of Health and Human Services Services.

Many of the nearly 240 Canadians on board left the ship after the critically ill and stood outside two tents displaying Canadian flags. Canada and the UK were among the countries sending chartered flights to retrieve their citizens.

U.S. passengers will be flown or bused from the port — chosen for its proximity to an airport and a military base — to bases in California, Texas and Georgia for testing and a 14-day quarantine. The ship is carrying people from 54 countries, and foreigners will be whisked home.

About 1,100 crew members, 19 of whom have tested positive for COVID-19, will be quarantined and treated aboard the ship, which will dock elsewhere after passengers are unloaded, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has said. 

For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia.

According to the World Health Organization, people with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three to six weeks to recover. In mainland China, where the virus first exploded, more than 80,000 people have been diagnosed and more than 58,000 have so far recovered. 

In an effort to stop the virus from spreading, Italy will impose travel restrictions and other strict public health measures nationwide starting Tuesday. And a combination of coronavirus fears and plunging oil prices sent stocks on Wall Street plummeting Monday.

The virus has infected more than 800 people in the United States, and at least 28 have died, most in Washington state. 

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 after an outbreak in the Seattle area.

In Silicon Valley, NASA’s Ames Research Center is essentially closed with restricted access because an employee tested positive Sunday for the coronavirus. 

Workers will be on ‘mandatory telework status’ and three earth science airplane missions are being delayed to later this year, the county said.

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. Georgia’s fourth-largest school district, which has more than 93,000 students, closed its schools for at least one day after a teacher at two middle schools was confirmed to have the coronavirus.

The Grand Princess had been held off the coast since Wednesday because of evidence that it was the breeding ground for more than 20 infections tied to a previous voyage.

Passengers from the previous voyage have tested positive in California and other states. Six Canadians who were on the Grand Princess from February 11 to 21 were also confirmed to have the virus.

The California governor and Oakland mayor sought to reassure people that none of the cruise ship passengers would be exposed to the public before completing the quarantine. Officials were trying to decide where the ship and its crew would go next.

The State Department warned against travel on cruise ships because of ‘increased risk of infection of COVID-19 in a cruise ship environment.’

Another Princess ship, the Diamond Princess, was quarantined for two weeks in Yokohama, Japan, last month because of the virus. Ultimately, about 700 of the 3,700 people aboard became infected in what experts pronounced a public health failure, with the vessel essentially becoming a floating germ factory.

National Guard is deployed to New Rochelle where a one-mile radius ‘containment area’ will shut schools, shops and temples   

Schools, houses of worship and large gathering places in the New York suburb that has the ‘largest cluster’ of coronavirus cases in the country will be shut down as the National Guard is being brought in to help stop the spread of the disease.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Tuesday that a one-mile containment area will be set up in New Rochelle in Westchester County where the main cluster of coronavirus have been reported.

The area is the epicenter of of the state’s coronavirus outbreak and accounts for more than 100 of New York’s 173 confirmed cases.

The radius centers around the Temple Young Israel of New Rochelle synagogue that was attended by the Manhattan attorney who has been linked to the outbreak in the area. 

The shutdown, which will begin on Thursday and last for two weeks, will effect all ‘major gathering places’ including schools and places of worship, Cuomo said.

‘It is a dramatic action, but it is the largest cluster in the country. And this is literally a matter of life and death,’ Cuomo said.

The announcement about the containment area came as New Jersey reported its first coronavirus death. It is the first fatality in the tri-state area.