The Australian government is working on a plan to evacuate its citizens off the stricken Diamond Princess cruise ship – now the largest site for coronavirus outside of mainland China.

More than 3,700 passengers and crew are on board the ship, docked at Yokohama port south of Tokyo. Since the infections began on board 355 people have tested positive for coronavirus, including 16 Australians.

Nearly 200 Australians are on the ship.

The US has begun an airlift operation to bring more than 400 of its citizens off the ship and into quarantine in the US. They face a further 14 days in isolation. Canada, South Korea, Hong Kong and Italy have announced flights home for their citizens and residents.

Australia’s national security committee of cabinet met late Sunday and will meet again Monday afternoon to formalise a plan to extract Australians from the ship.

The director of Communicable Disease Control with the Western Australian Health Department, Paul Armstrong, is due to board the Diamond Princess on Monday morning to assess the situation on the ship. He will report back to the committee.

The federal health minister, Greg Hunt, said the government was working through the logistics of extracting its citizens and bringing them home to Australia.

“We are planning a potential operation to bring them home,” Hunt told the Seven network. “[Armstrong] will report back to the national security committee today and if his advice is that there has been in any way a secondary round of infections, and obviously the presumption is that’s the case, then we will look to work with Qantas to bring these people home.”

Hunt said the government also needed to make a final decision on where to quarantine this latest cohort of evacuees.

“Many of these patients or passengers on the ship are very elderly and may need to be near major hospital facilities,” he said.

“We are working through that with different options and we will have advice later today.”

So far Australia has used the immigration detention centre on Christmas Island and a disused mining workers village near Darwin as quarantine centres. The prime minister has ruled out using Christmas Island as a quarantine centre for this cohort and a mainland site is overwhelmingly likely.

Only patients who are well, without any symptoms of coronavirus, will be evacuated by Australia. Those who test positive are being moved to Japanese hospitals for treatment.

A government source said there was a “strong appetite” to move Australians from the Diamond Princess as soon as possible, but only “when we have the right plan”.

The Japanese government is bracing for a surge in cases. Along with 70 new cases on board the Diamond Princess, on land the number of infections more than doubled between Thursday and Sunday, from 29 to 59. Japan now has the second-highest number of cases (behind Singapore) outside of China. Health experts are concerned by rapid human-to-human transmission in the country.

“We must anticipate a spread of infections from now and must build medical systems and so on to focus efforts to prevent people from becoming gravely ill or dying,” the Japanese health minister, Katsunobu Kato, said.

On board the 290-metre Diamond Princess, passengers and crew say their quarantine has been a mix of fear – especially as the number of infections has spiked – and boredom. Food service is carefully regimented to limit interactions between crew and passengers, and passengers must do their own laundry and bathroom cleaning.

Passengers without balconies are allowed to walk on the deck for about an hour each day, as long as they keep six feet apart.

Despite the restrictions, those on board have tried to remain upbeat.

We all know that we were facing a crisis here in Diamond Princess due to NCoV but hey we still managed to smile, laugh and dance. For our Family and Friends to know that we were Ok here and We Will Stand Together As One until we finish the Quarantine.#Galley#TeamDiamondPrincess pic.twitter.com/0nqsPsOfhP — Mae Fantillo (@maejuliene18) February 14, 2020





Melbourne woman Vera Koslova-Fu told the ABC Australian passengers on board were still not sure if and when they’d be leaving.

“There’s been some chatter about people not leaving, if we are being evacuated … we just feel like we’re kept in the dark.”

But she said passengers were concerned about facing another two weeks in quarantine, having been sequestered on the ship since it docked in Yokohama on 3 February.

“If it is a negative result, we will be allowed to disembark?

“I don’t want to go to another facility to be quarantined for 14 days if I am tested negative.”

Fifteen people have tested positive to coronavirus in Australia: six have since been cleared, the remaining nine are in stable conditions.

Globally, the total number of people has surpassed 69,000, with 1,670 deaths recorded. Nearly 10,000 people have contracted coronavirus and recovered. Some 68,500 of the infections are on mainland China, the vast majority in central Hubei province.



