A Tennessee doctor with a friend in Congress was instrumental in bringing home hundreds of Americans who were stuck in Asia on a coronavirus-laden cruise ship, according to a new report detailing the government decision to evacuate the ship.

Dr. Arnold Hopland, who runs a medical clinic in Elizabethton, is now in a Japanese quarantine facility while his wife, Jeanie, is treated for coronavirus in a hospital. The couple was on the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship where about 3,700 people were quarantined in their cabins for weeks as the infection spread.

While Hopland was stuck on the ship, he made calls to Tennessee Rep. Phil Roe, providing information that appears to be partially responsible for the rescue of other Americans. Hopland, who is friends with Roe, detailed the deteriorating conditions on the ship to the congressman, who then pushed the State Department to intervene.

In the end, Hopland's details and Roe's urging prompted officials to finally evacuate the cruise ship, according to a deeply-sourced report by The Washington Post.

“That tipped the balance,” an unnamed senior administration official told the Post.

Although other Americans were flown back to the U.S., Hopland stayed in Japan because his wife is infected and can not leave. In an email sent to The Tennessean, Hopland said he was finally transferred from the cruise ship to a quarantine facility on the shore Saturday night. Hopland said he was one of approximately 100 Americans "trapped in Japan" due to the "Diamond Princess debacle."

"This is a major embarrassment to the USA which is effectively announcing to the world they are incapable of caring for their own citizens and are assigning that duty to a foreign country," Hopland said. "My wife is now infected with coronavirus and it is entirely possible that I am as well due to the ineptitude of the CDC initially."

Roe, a Republican representing northeast Tennessee who is also a doctor, confirmed in a statement on his website that he got "invaluable first-hand accounts" from the Diamond Princess from Hopland and then urged federal agencies to get Americans off the ship and bring them home.

“I am relieved to hear that American citizens quarantined on the Diamond Princess off the coast of Japan will be evacuated to the United States for medical evaluation and any necessary care,” Roe said in a written statement. “I applaud the administration for this decision, which I know was not easy given the rapidly-changing situation.”

Coronavirus (also known as COVID-19) is an exceptionally contagious virus that has infected about 77,000 people and killed about 2,200, mostly in the Chinese city of Wuhan. World Health officials have prioritized stopping the spread of the outbreak, but one of the largest exceptions to that containment is The Diamond Princess, a British ship with 2,600 passengers and more than 1,000 crew that left Japan on a 15-day cruise in January.

The first sick passenger was discovered days later as the ship was at sea. In the tight quarters of the ship, the virus quickly spread and infected more than 600 people. Soon, the Diamond Princess held more confirmed cases of the virus than any country other than China.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, has said the concept of quarantining passengers on the ship wasn't unreasonable, but in reality the plan had "failed."

"I'd like to sugarcoat it and try to be diplomatic about it, but it failed," Fauci said. "People were getting infected on that ship. Something went awry in the process of the quarantining on that ship. I don't know what it was, but a lot of people got infected on that ship."

► USA TODAY EDITORIAL:Evacuate the 400 American Diamond Princess passengers back home

For the next few weeks, passengers were largely quarantined in their cabins while the ship sat in a Japanese port. Last week, about 380 Americans who had not show signs of infection were permitted to disembark the ship and fly back to the United States to be quarantined at military bases in California and Texas. Fourteen of those passengers tested positive at the last minute but were still allowed to return to the U.S.

Brett Kelman is the health care reporter for The Tennessean. He can be reached at 615-259-8287 or at brett.kelman@tennessean.com. Follow him on Twitter at @brettkelman.