21 positive for coronavirus on Grand Princess cruise ship off California coast

SAN FRANCISCO — Twenty-one people aboard a mammoth cruise ship off the California coast tested positive for the new coronavirus and 19 of them are crew members, Vice President Mike Pence announced Friday, amid evidence the vessel was the breeding ground for a deadly cluster of more than 10 cases during its previous voyage.

He said federal officials were working with California authorities on a plan to bring the ship to a non-commercial port. There was no immediate word on where or when the vessel will dock, and in the meantime, everyone on aboard was keeping to themselves in their rooms.

“All passengers and crew will be tested for the virus,” Pence said. “Those that will need to be quarantined will be quarantined. Those who will require medical help will receive it.”

Pence said 46 of the more than 3,500 people aboard were tested in the first round. A military helicopter crew lowered test kits onto the 951-foot (290-meter) Grand Princess by rope Thursday and later retrieved them for analysis as the vessel waited off San Francisco, under orders to keep its distance from shore.

Health officials trying to establish whether the virus is circulating on the Grand Princess undertook the testing after reporting 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 10 other people who were on the same journey also were found to be infected. And some passengers on that trip stayed aboard for the current voyage — increasing crew members’ exposure to the virus.

“We know the coronavirus manifested among the previous passengers ... we will be testing everyone on the ship, we will be quarantining as necessary,” Pence said. “We anticipate that they will be quarantined on the ship, they will not need to disembark.”

AP

Princess Cruises said the ship’s doctor would inform passengers and crew of their results after confirmation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Another Princess ship, the Diamond Princess, was quarantined for two weeks in Yokohama, Japan, last month because of the virus, and 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.

Meanwhile, the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus climbed to 14, with all but one victim in Washington state, while the number of infections swelled to over 200, scattered across about half the states. Pennsylvania, Indiana, Minnesota and Nebraska reported their first cases.

On Wall Street, stocks swung wildly as fears mounted over the potential damage to the global economy from factory shutdowns, travel bans, quarantines and cancellations of events big and small — a list that grew to include the world-famous South by Southwest arts festival in Austin, Texas, which was set to begin next week.

President Donald Trump 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.

Most of the dead in the U.S. were from suburban Seattle’s Life Care Center nursing home, now the subject of federal and state investigations that could lead to sanctions, including a possible takeover of its management. Washington state has the nation’s biggest concentration of cases, with at least 70.

Thirty medical professionals from the U.S. Public Health Service will arrive Saturday at the nursing home to help care for patients and provide relief to the exhausted staff, said Dow Constantine, executive in charge of Seattle’s King County.

“We are grateful the cavalry is arriving. It will make rapid change in the conditions there,” he said.

The nursing home was down to 69 residents after 15 were taken to the hospital in the preceding 24 hours, Constantine said.

Some major businesses in the Seattle area — including Microsoft and Amazon, which together employ more than 100,000 people in the region — have shut down operations or urged employees to work from home. The University of Washington called off classes at its three Seattle-area campuses for the next two weeks and will instead teach its 57,000 students online. And a comics convention next week in Seattle that was expected to draw about 100,000 people was canceled.

In California, the ship 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 virus, California authorities said. Others who were on that voyage also have tested positive in Northern California, Nevada, and Canada.

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 and crew 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.”

He said the fallout from the ship quarantined in Japan demonstrates the urgent need to move people off the ship and into a “safer quarantine environment.”

Steven Smith and his wife, Michele, of Paradise, California, said they are a bit worried but feel safe in their room aboard the Grand Princess.

“What’s given us hope is that the system that is in place, our government, the CDC, we feel is doing a remarkable job,” Steven Smith said.

Two COVID-19 deaths in Florida are first on East Coast

Meanwhile, in Florida, two people who tested positive for the new coronavirus have died, marking the first deaths on the East Coast attributed to the outbreak in the U.S., health officials said Friday.

The Florida Department of Health said the two people who died were in their 70s and had traveled overseas. The announcement raises the U.S. death toll from the novel coronavirus strain to 16, including 13 in the state of Washington and one in California.

One of the Florida deaths was that of a man with underlying health issues in Santa Rosa County in Florida’s Panhandle, according to the statement. The health department added that the second death was that of an elderly person in Lee County, in the Fort Myers area.

The statement did not give immediate indications of where the two had traveled or whether officials were seeking to determine who they came in contact with.

Helen Aguirre Ferre, a spokeswoman for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, confirmed the deaths and other new cases in South Florida, on Twitter. She promised in her tweet that updates would be provided regularly as they become available.

The spokeswoman did not immediately respond to an email request by The Associated Press for more information.

As of Friday, Florida authorities said seven people in the state have tested positive for COVID-19. They said six are Florida residents and the seventh is a non-resident.

Contributing: Adriana Gomez Licon, Associated Press