UPDATE FEB. 6: Forest Grove woman infected with coronavirus on cruise ship

Intel technician Kent Frasure was just waking up Wednesday in his suite on the cruise ship Diamond Princess when the captain’s voice announced the shocking news through a speaker in the room.

“Ten people have tested positive for coronavirus,” the captain said. “They will be taken ashore by Japanese Coast Guard.”

Like the rest of the guests on the ship, docked just south of Tokyo, Frasure and his wife, Rebecca Frasure, were asked to stay in their rooms “in the best interests of their health.”

Now, the couple from Forest Grove is hunkering down with free internet, iPads, a Nintendo Switch, a TV, a few bottles of sake and each other to wait out an unexpected extension to their cruise trip.

“It’s hard to really wrap my head around it right now, you know, what exactly is going on,” said Kent Frasure, 42.

Nearly 2,700 passengers and 1,045 crew are on the ship, according to the Princess Cruises.

What was supposed to be a 15-day cruise will now have a 14-day quarantine tacked on to the end of it. Passengers have been told to stay in their rooms.

The quarantine is just one speck in the ocean of effort that countries are taking in their attempts to stop the spread of a new coronavirus that has infected tens of thousands of people and killed more than 490.

In the United States, health officials have identified 11 people with the virus, including one in Washington state. All U.S. patients are doing well, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday, and the risk to the American public is low.

But the federal government appears to not be taking any chances. The State Department has declared that people should not travel to China – period. And people arriving in the United States from Wuhan, China – the city where the virus is believed to have started – are being held in Air Force bases for 14 days.

“We continue to believe the immediate risk of coronavirus exposure to the general public is low, however, the CDC is undertaking these measures to help keep that risk low,” the agency said in a statement.

Kent Frasure said he and his wife knew about the virus outbreak but weren’t particularly concerned when they began their cruise to Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Vietnam.

“It was never really a topic of conversation,” he said.

They flew into Tokyo’s Narita airport Jan. 19 and got on the Diamond Princess the next day. Over the next 10 days they visited a town in Southern Japan, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

When they got to Okinawa this past Sunday -- their last stop before going back to Tokyo -- things started to look strange.

To get off the ship, Frasure said he and the other passengers had to stand on an ‘X’ and get their temperature checked with a machine that looked like a projector. He got a thumbs-up after the check, he said, and proceeded to fill out a questionnaire about symptoms and then go through customs.

Ship staff told passengers that the Japanese government wanted to do extra screening for the new coronavirus, Frasure said. It took about five hours to get off the ship -- far longer than normal, he said.

Two days later, the couple learned that a man with coronavirus had boarded the same day as they did – Jan. 20 – and had gotten off the ship in Hong Kong.

Ship staff announced that they were speeding back to Tokyo ahead of schedule so passengers could get extra testing. At that point, Frasure said, people were still free to walk around the ship and mingle.

Early Tuesday morning after the ship arrived back in Japan, the Frasures got a knock on the door. Medical staff came in and tested their temperatures with ear thermometers and asked them to fill out questionnaires.

Both said they were taking pain medications. For that reason, the two were later asked to go to a room with three doctors wearing face masks, white gowns and gloves to get another temperature test. A worker used what looked like “a giant cotton swab” to swipe up tissue from deep inside their throats.

Then Wednesday, the captain told passengers to stay in their rooms and that they were quarantined for two weeks.

It was a “very surreal moment,” Kent Frasure said. “Life turned upside down, and we have zero control over what’s going to happen.”

The cruise line appeared to be taking steps to ensure whatever comfort they could. People who needed prescriptions would get them, Kent Frasure said. Staff brought food to every room, one by one, he said. The ship opened up the internet to everyone and added channels to the TV.

Kent Frasure said he wishes the company’s communication and prevention steps had kicked in more urgently after the announcement that a person with coronavirus had gotten off the ship at Hong Kong.

“There were no additional precautions really taken,” he said. “It was just like status quo, normal day to day activities.”

-- Fedor Zarkhin

fzarkhin@oregonian.com

desk: 503-294-7674|cell: 971-373-2905|@fedorzarkhin

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