Coronavirus: 60 new cases aboard Diamond Princess cruise ship

Tokyo, Feb 10 (EFE).- Over 60 new cases of the novel coronavirus have been detected aboard a cruise ship quarantined in the Japanese port city of Yokohama since last week, the health ministry said Monday.

These new cases take the total number of infected aboard to 130, according to the latest results of the medical tests being carried out on board by the Japanese ministry, public broadcaster NHK reported.

The Diamond Princess cruise ship has been at Yokohama port since 3 February when Japanese authorities denied it from disembarking and ordered it be quarantined after confirming one passenger was infected with the coronavirus.

The victim was a man in his 80s from Hong Kong, who disembarked the week before last – one of the stops of this cruise that sailed from Yokohama on 20 January – and also passed through the Okinawa and Kagoshima ports in southwest Japan. 

Japanese authorities have been analyzing samples taken from passengers on the ship displaying potential symptoms and those had been in contact with those infected with the virus.

The ministry has also asked passengers and crew members to remain on the ship for at least 14 days starting 5 February, the estimated maximum time for the incubation of the virus.

In addition to the cases recorded aboard the cruiser, 26 cases of the coronavirus – which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan – have also bee detected in Japan, according to ministry data.

On Saturday, the Japanese government also confirmed the death of a 60-year-old citizen who was hospitalized in the Chinese city of Wuhan with severe pneumonia, making him the first Japanese known to have died of the new coronavirus. 

The worldwide death toll from the disease climbed to 910 on Monday after China’s National Health Commission raised the number of deaths in mainland China to 908, an increase of 97 from a day earlier. 

One person has died in Hong Kong and another in the Philippines, while the total number of cases has crossed the 40,000 mark in Chinaand more than 300 people have been infected in at least 25 countries worldwide.

The virus has already claimed more lives than the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003. EFE© 2020 EFE News Services (U.S.) Inc.