As yet another group of coronavirus evacuees heads to San Antonio, some of the region’s elected officials are pushing the federal government to keep them confined to Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland to the maximum extent possible.

Local officials were informed late Saturday that the government intends to send about 100 passengers from the Grand Princess, a cruise ship idling off the California coast, to Lackland for quarantine. At least 21 people on board are infected with the new coronavirus. But only symptom-free passengers will be sent to Lackland, federal authorities said.

The group could arrive as early as Monday night, San Antonio officials were told. About 90 are Texans, and the rest live in surrounding states, Mayor Ron Nirenberg told the Express-News on Sunday. All of them will be tested for the virus upon arrival in San Antonio, he said.

Lackland has already been used to quarantine a total of 235 evacuees from China, where the coronavirus outbreak began, and from cruise ships, which have proven susceptible to its spread.

The Defense Department has said JBSA has some of the largest lodging capacity among U.S. military installations, including many single rooms without shared bathrooms, which are ideal for isolation efforts.

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Since the first evacuees arrived here in early February, relations have grown frayed between local officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has overseen the quarantines. After a dozen of those evacuated from the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship docked in Japan, tested positive for the virus, city officials asked that patients with mild symptoms not be transported to local hospitals outside Lackland for treatment — a request that was ignored.

On Sunday, with a new group of evacuees on the way, Nirenberg said city and state officials have proposed measures to minimize the quarantine’s burden on local hospitals and the risk that the virus could spread into the community.

‘Stay on federal grounds’

For instance, officials have asked that evacuees be kept on Lackland as much as possible, and that infected patients who do not have severe symptoms be treated at medical facilities on JBSA.

The gist of the requests is that “the federal operation stay on federal grounds and that they use base facilities for the execution of this mission,” Nirenberg said.

“The entire purpose of a quarantine mission is to ensure that the public is not exposed,” the mayor said. “The spread of COVID-19 in the United States, if these quarantine missions are done properly, will have nothing to do with evacuated, repatriated Americans.”

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U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a San Antonio Democrat, said his office has asked whether evacuees could be treated at Brooke Army Medical Center rather than in civilian hospitals off-base. The Defense Department has been “obstinate” about not wanting anyone infected with the virus to remain on JBSA for long, Castro said in an interview Sunday.

But he said things may be different now that the city and county have declared public health emergencies over the release of the Diamond Princess evacuees.

“That was smart of the mayor and the county judge to make that declaration, because it has forced the CDC to take into consideration, or take more seriously, the city’s legitimate requests,” Castro said.

U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, a San Antonio Republican, said he also wanted to work with the Defense Department on using on-base medical facilities — BAMC and the Wilford Hall Ambulatory Surgical Center — to treat coronavirus patients. At the end of the day, Hurd said, “all health care providers are going to have to potentially deal with this.”

Cruise ship seeks port

The Grand Princess cruise ship has waited off the California coast for days as federal officials tried to decide what to do with the more than 3,500 people onboard. At least one former passenger, a California man, has died of the virus, health officials have said.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said Sunday that the Grand Princess would dock at a non-passenger port in San Francisco Bay, allowing the passengers to disembark and travel to military installations for medical screening, testing and quarantine. But after the boat was turned away there, plans were made for it to dock Monday in Oakland.

Almost 1,000 of the passengers who live in California are being sent to Travis AFB, northeast of San Francisco, or Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, in San Diego. Those who live in other states will be flown to Lackland and to Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Georgia, HHS said.

The State Department is helping to coordinate the return of several hundred international passengers to their countries of origin.

John Wittman, spokesman for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, said Sunday that the governor had discussed the arrival of the latest group of passengers with Vice President Mike Pence, who is overseeing the government’s coronavirus response.

“All of the repatriated citizens will remain at Lackland under quarantine until they clear the revised and heightened testing protocol to ensure they are not affected by the COVID-19 virus,” Wittman said in a statement. “Once cleared, Texans will be released to return home while non-Texans will be safely transported to their home state using the same public safety protocol used for Diamond Princess passengers who were previously quarantined at Lackland.”

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The Grand Princess is owned by Princess Cruises — the same company that operates the Diamond Princess. Some 144 Diamond Princess passengers were flown to Lackland on Feb. 17.

After completing their two-week quarantine, 127 of the evacuees were released on Tuesday — despite protests by San Antonio officials, who feared they could still pose a danger to the public and who unsuccessfully sought to extend their quarantine.

The CDC has not yet relinquished the on-base hotel where evacuees have been isolated from military personnel. As of Friday, six evacuees remained in extended quarantine there, after coming into close contact with people who later were found to be infected with the virus. The facility can accommodate up to 250 people.

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Mistaken release

The first group of evacuees at Lackland included 91 people from the epicenter of the outbreak — the city of Wuhan in central China. They were brought to the base in early February. All but one person in that group was released from quarantine late last month.

That last evacuee from the Wuhan group became the subject of much consternation last week, when she was released before it was known that she still had low levels of the virus in her system.

The woman had tested negative twice and appeared recovered on Feb. 29, which qualified her for release under CDC guidelines in effect at the time. After she was released, she visited North Star Mall, one of San Antonio’s busiest retail centers, and a hotel near the airport.

Then health officials learned of positive results from a third test sample taken from the woman. She was returned to the Texas Center for Infectious Disease, where she had been treated earlier. The Metropolitan Health District is monitoring at least 21 people who came into contact with her.

Afterward, the CDC changed its guidelines for discharging coronavirus patients. They now require two consecutive negative tests 24 hours apart, without any results pending.

The mix-up fueled calls by San Antonio officials to retest all the Diamond Princess passengers. However, officials ultimately worked with the CDC to amend the protocols for releasing people from quarantine so that evacuees have as little contact with the public as possible on their way out of San Antonio.

“It was clear that last week was a reckoning, in many ways, for how these (evacuees) are handled,” he said.

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Hurd said there’s a reason why Lackland continues to be tapped for quarantines.

“I don’t think there’s another top 10 city that has the military presence that we do and the first-rate medical infrastructure that San Antonio does,” Hurd said. “Everybody in San Antonio understands the responsibility and the duty that comes with that.”

Much has changed since the Diamond Princess group was released, he added, including federal lawmakers’ passage of $8.3 billion in coronavirus-related funding. Of the total, more than $35 million is earmarked for infection control and preparedness efforts in Texas.

As of Friday, 11 people with coronavirus were isolated in hospitals in San Antonio. All had been evacuated from either Wuhan or the Diamond Princess.

Two recovered patients were discharged from the hospital on Thursday and Friday.

Lauren Caruba covers health care and medicine in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | lcaruba@express-news.net | Twitter: @LaurenCaruba