Cruise ship denied entry in San Francisco following 21 passengers testing positive for Co-Vid 19
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Twenty-one people tested positive for coronavirus on Friday aboard a ship that was denied entry to San Francisco Bay after a number of passengers and crew developed flu-like symptoms on the vessel, which had been linked to infections from an earlier voyage.
The Grand Princess was forbidden to dock in San Francisco amid evidence that the vessel was the breeding ground for a deadly cluster of more than 10 cases during its previous voyage.
Vice President Mike Pence, recently appointed as the U.S. government’s point man on the coronavirus outbreak, said the cruise ship Grand Princess will be brought to an unspecified non-commercial port where all 2,400 passengers and 1,100 crew will undergo another round of tests.
The developments on Friday intensified the focus on California, where residents were confronting an alarming new reality: From the gold country of the Sierra foothills to the sprawl of Los Angeles, America’s most populous state was emerging as a new center for the virus.
As of Friday afternoon, California had more than 70 confirmed cases, not counting the cases on the ship.
Off the coast, thousands of cruise ship passengers — many of them Californians — had been holed up in their cabins all day under isolation orders as they awaited news of whether the coronavirus may be festering on board. On Friday night, those travelers were learning they would be brought to an unidentified site for testing and possible quarantine.
“We are working literally hour by hour with the Department of Defense and the state of California to identify the military bases where we will do the testing of the remaining passengers,” Mr. Pence said.
Passengers expressed shock and dismay that they were not informed of the test results before Pence announced it, and anguish over the uncertainty of what would happen to them next.
