THE government is making arrangements with San Francisco to allow the repatriation of more than 500 Filipino seamen aboard the Grand Princess luxury cruise ship which was eventually allowed to dock in Oakland, California, last Monday.
The more than 3,000 passengers and crew will undergo quarantine because health authorities there feared that they may have been exposed to the coronavirus (COVID-19).
Foreign Affairs
Secretary
Teodoro Locsin Jr., tweeted that they are looking for a runway to accommodate a
big aircraft to ferry the Filipinos back home.
“We just need the US or California state government to give us time to find a landing field that will take a big PAL plane,” he said on his official Twitter account Wednesday morning.
“San Francisco can’t allow us to repatriate from its airport. But we’re making the case for repatriating 529 crew with the nine cruise passengers,” he added.
It was reported that 234 Canadian passengers disembarked from the cruise ship on Monday and were taken to a chartered flight that brought them back to their native country, while two Canadian passengers were transported via ambulance to area hospitals for treatment. Officials said they hope to have another at least 800 passengers off the Grand Princess by Tuesday evening.
The Grand Princess, with some 3,533 passengers and crew, had been stranded off the coast of San Francisco after coming from a cruise in Mexico. It was not allowed to dock after two people who had been on the ship in its previous voyage contracted the virus. One later died.
The news from abroad said most of the 2,000-plus passengers stuck aboard the Grand Princess were still awaiting their orders to get off the boat at the Port of Oakland Tuesday while hundreds were processed before beginning a mandated 14-day quarantine.
6 infected Filipinos
The Department of Health said at least six of the Filipinos onboard the luxury cruise ship tested positive for the coronavirus.
Joel Buenaventura, chief health program officer of the DOH’s Migrant Health Unit, confirmed this information during a House of Representatives committee hearing, saying the confirmation came from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It is not yet clear if the six infected Filipinos are all crew members, or if some are passengers.
According to the Washington Post, the off-loading process is expected to take days. “After that, many of the exposed travelers will be transported through highly populated areas by bus and flown by chartered plane before quarantine.”
American officials said 21 of the 46 people tested on the ship had the coronavirus, indicating that the illness could be spreading on the ship. Nineteen of those who tested positive were part of the crew.
More than 170 of those passengers are US citizens and about 150 were transported by bus Monday to a quarantined facility at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, while 24 were taken via ambulance.
Some buses were filled and driven to Oakland International Airport for a flight or multiple flights to Joint Base San Antonio Lackland in Texas and or Dobbins Air Force Base in Georgia.
Twenty-six cruise ship passengers were taken to hospitals in six different Bay Area counties for medical needs unrelated to COVID-19. But not all of them required further hospital care and some of them were taken to motels and hotels in Burlingame, San Carlos and in Monterey County.
American health authorities gave their assurance that the hotels where the passengers were taken “are 100 percent secure, 100 percent segregated from the general public.”
“These are secure not only when it comes to security, but from a protocol perspective and processing perspective,” but perhaps some of the most safest sites in the community.”