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Last weekend, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff was confident the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services would transfer some passengers from the coronavirus-infected Diamond Princess cruise ship from Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland to federal facilities in Anniston, Ala.

He’d reached an understanding with the agency after swapping emails with one of its top officials. Darcie Johnston, the HHS director of intergovernmental affairs, thanked Wolff for “the partnership and your patience while we worked through these logistics,” adding: “This should help lesson (sic) the burden on San Antonio.”

That was Saturday. But the deal crumbled overnight.

Alabama’s six-term Republican senator, Richard Shelby, boasted on Twitter the next day that he had scotched efforts to bring some of the cruise ship passengers to his state.

“I just got off the phone with the President,” Shelby wrote. “He told me that his administration will not be sending any victims of the Coronavirus from the Diamond Princess cruise ship to Anniston. … Thank you, @POTUS, for working with us to ensure the safety of all Alabamians.”

Call it a classic case of NIMBY — not in my back yard or, in this case, the Heart of Dixie.

As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called on San Antonians to welcome home Americans from the star-crossed cruise ship, which had while docked in Yokohama, Japan, become a virtual incubator for the highly contagious virus, Shelby responded to the same request with a power play.

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It ensured that Lackland, already serving as the federal quarantine site for 91 Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China, also had to keep 144 passengers from the Diamond Princess, all but one of whom remain here.

So far, five of the ship passengers have tested positive for coronavirus. Four more could be infected but await final test results.

One evacuee among the Wuhan group that arrived Feb. 7 also came down with the virus and remains hospitalized. The rest from Wuhan completed their quarantine and have left the base.

Wolff said he didn’t publicly complain about Shelby’s move because “there wasn’t nothing I could do about it.”

“I don’t necessarily say that I’m blaming him. I’m sure he doesn’t want to take on the responsibility for his state. I don’t know that there’s anything wrong about what he said,” Wolff said.

The presence of so many evacuated passengers who are ill or could become ill has worried Wolff, Mayor Ron Nirenberg, other local officials and health professionals.

WIN TICKETS: Spurs Nation is giving away four box seat tickets to the March 22 home game.

In a letter sent Monday, they reiterated their concerns and asked Defense Secretary Mark Esper to reconsider a policy that evacuees be transferred from the quarantined hotel at Lackland to an off-site hospital for testing and observation or treatment for mild symptoms. They said those evacuees would be better off at Lackland.

The transfers, they warned, could overload hospitals’ limited capacity and needlessly expose the community to the virus, which has proved deadly to older patients with such conditions as high blood pressure and diabetes. Starting last week, the Texas Center for Infectious Disease on the South Side began treating some evacuees.

The prospect of relocating some ship passengers to an Alabama facility would have taken pressure off of San Antonio. Wolff seemed to be assured Saturday that the move was imminent.

Johnston, the HHS director of intergovernmental affairs, sent an agency news release to Wolff, along with a brief message. The release stated that HHS and the Federal Emergency Management Agency had agreed to use FEMA’s Center for Domestic Preparedness in Anniston “as a place for some of the American passengers from the Diamond Princess to stay.”

It went on to say, “The passengers who will stay at the Center tested positive for COVID-19, although at this time they do not have symptoms or they have mild flu-like symptoms. Any of the evacuees who become seriously ill will be transported to pre-identified hospitals for medical care.

“Under the HHS-FEMA agreement, the Center for Domestic Preparedness will provide the housing, and HHS will provide basic medical care and all other support services for these returning passengers. Passengers will stay in a separate area from these training participants and will remain at the Center until they are medically cleared.”

“Thank you so much for the information,” Wolff wrote back to Johnston. “We appreciate the department’s decision to take the passengers from the Diamond Princess to the federal facilities to Anniston, Alabama.”

She then replied, “Just to be clear this will be only passengers that are asymptomatic and test positive for COVID-19 and do not need hospital care.”

Johnston did not reply to an email sent by the San Antonio Express-News on Thursday, but a person speaking on her behalf said on background that the agency was “identifying alternative sites that would meet the most immediate potential need to safely house and care for some of the Diamond Princess passengers who tested positive for COVID-19. The FEMA Center for Domestic Preparedness in Anniston, Ala., was one site determined to be suitable and effective, but is not needed at this time.”

Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-San Antonio, said Thursday that while Shelby had blocked the relocation of some Diamond Princess passengers to Alabama, he has been told “of progress being made in finding a new out-of-state location to accommodate patients from San Antonio, should we exceed our current capacity.”

On ExpressNews.com: State hospital in San Antonio begins treating coronavirus evacuees from Lackland

Wolff, a Democrat, said this week that he’s been frustrated by weak support from the Texas congressional delegation about the transfer problem.

“I don’t know of anything they’ve done. They certainly haven’t called me,” he said, referring to “our requests to keep people on the base until they do the tests and confirm them.”

Until Thursday, when U.S. Rep. Will Hurd called, Wolff said that just one congressman has gone to bat for the city — freshman U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, a Republican, whose district doesn’t even include Lackland.

Roy raised local officials’ concerns about the evacuee hospital transfers in a Feb. 18 letter to HHS Secretary Alex Azar.

“He did ask questions,” Wolff said, “and I don’t think he got any answers to them. … I haven’t heard from anybody else. But to me, this shouldn’t be the congressman having to put pressure or whatever. Hell, it ought to be, ‘Do the right damn thing and keep them in a quarantine area.’”

Roy said Thursday his sense that decisions had been made without the input of San Antonio leaders prompted him to write his letter to Azar, which has yet to receive a formal response. He has had conversations with HHS officials at their offices and hopes to soon receive a classified briefing.

Roy said he stressed the need for local officials to play a role in future decisions but added that San Antonio is happy to help respond.

“We, as Americans, do have an obligation to figure out how to help each other, and Shelby’s (tweet) was a little bit dismissive and sort of a ‘not in my backyard,’” said Roy, whose district includes JBSA-Fort Sam Houston.

Sen. John Cornyn’s office pushed back upon hearing Wolff’s comments that the delegation has been unresponsive.

An aide to Cornyn, R-Texas, said the senator hosted a Feb. 20 meeting in San Antonio that brought HHS officials together with local leaders, including Nirenberg, City Manager Erik Walsh and City Council members Clayton Perry and Adriana Rocha Garcia. The aide said Wolff had been invited “multiple times” but did not attend.

Cornyn also arranged a conference call to connect HHS officials with local leaders within hours of the first evacuees arriving in San Antonio and since has set up two more calls to keep federal officials and city officials on the same page, the aide said.

The aide said Cornyn has spoken directly with Robert Kadlec, HHS assistant secretary for preparedness and response, and that both city and county officials have been asked to figure out their costs for federal reimbursement.

“I was on the conference call that his staff set up,” Wolff said, noting that was the same day — Feb. 18 — he wrote a letter to Roy expressing concerns about transporting evacuees off the base. “That’s the only one I’ve been invited to by them.”

Like Wolff, Doggett said he, too, was frustrated.

“Given evasive and insubstantial answers from the Trump administration to my repeated inquiries, including the need for testing on base, I understand and share the strong dissatisfaction of local officials,” Doggett said.

He and Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, raised concerns with Azar about possible insufficient disinfectant protocols for doorknobs, playgrounds and other public areas used by evacuees and the lack of enforcement for exposed individuals to wear protective gear in common areas.

“Additionally,” they wrote, “given the rapid spread of coronavirus among health care professionals in China, we request further information about the precautions taken to ensure that not a single health worker in San Antonio is exposed to the virus.”

Azar has not responded to the letter.

On Monday, the ship evacuees who are not infected are scheduled to leave Lackland, their 14-day quarantine completed.

If a new quarantine site in the U.S. is to open, the location, if known, is a well-kept secret.

Sig Christenson covers the military and its impact in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. To read more from Sig, become a subscriber. sigc@express-news.net | Twitter: @saddamscribe