23 passengers not tested before leaving cruise ship in Yokohama

According to an article in NHK, a woman in Tochigi who tested negative at the time of disembarking the cruise, tested now positive.

Anyone who got off that ship should have been put into at least 2 weeks of quarantine, as the passengers who went to the US and other countries!

The health ministry and Abe government have been doing their best to cover up their own sloppiness, but the facts dont lie, people are testing positive all over the place, and Abe doesnt know what the frig to do!

I’m sure she won’t be the last passenger who will test positive after disembarking. I wonder how she got home? Public transit ? Taxi? Family members picked her up? No matter, all of them will need to quarantine themselves.

Its beyond stupid how those passengers were just allowed to go home with no additional quarantine. Idiotic!!!!!!

This is literally scary now. And all could have been prevented or at the least, lessened if the inept Japanese government had acted more swiftly and strongly.

Good luck all!

Very hard to quarantine more than 3500 people on the ship

my questions are

why CDC of those countries did not advice their governments to evacuate

their citizens from the beginning of quarantine episode ?

They can evacuate their citizens home and take care of them .

Incompetence at its finest.

How does one self quarantine at home for two weeks? I mean, how do you get food and other necessary supplies to survive without exposing other people?

Saw the NHK report. As we all predicted, the Health Minister apologizing for the mishandling of the crisis.

What a debacle from the very start.

Whoopsies!

say just 5 are infected or carriers, then keep squaring that... 25 125 625 3125 in a few days right there. 10 infected; 100, 1000, 10000... 20 infected; 400, 8000, 160,000. With that 14 day incubation period a huge load of cases are about to drop. Or not. Depends on a lot of factors like existing health level from enough rest, washing hands, freedom of movement, having a health care system that lets you take time off. Versus overtired overtime, masks, close quarters, coming into work because you can't stay home.

Yeah 14 days

Oy vey! Why can't government officials seek the advice of experts such as Professor Iwata at the outset and do exactly what such experts say?

The Canadians who have returned are now speaking to media describing the haphazard and inadequate control of the situation on the Diamond Princess. Unbelievable incompetence and mishandling of the situation by both the Japan. The Canadian government got no praise for its effort on behalf of its citizens either.

Laughably, the Canadian Embassy website for Tokyo offers only cautions about not visiting Fukushima and Reubella outbreaks.

The Japanese government recently issued number to call is only available in Japanese. Nothing else for anyone who might wonder what to do next if they've run a fever for 4 days and have self-isolated. The best thing my Embassy could do was offer me the JNTO help line. Pathetic.

What a debacle from the very start.

Well, yeah, but not for the reasons being claimed here. There was no stopping it spreading. Even if quarantine of the Diamond Princess was 100 percent effective other vectors have succeeded anyway. The government has played a good game of pretending to try and do the impossible to placate the news reading lemmings who think those tax collectors are their loving papas who will protect them from the boogeyman.

I wish there was someway I could convince some people to just watch a horror movie to get their daily panic attack instead of coming to a news site to wallow in and spread their hysteria over this.

Japan's health minister said Saturday that 23 passengers were released from the Diamond Princess cruise ship without being tested for the new virus due to procedural mistakes, another sign of sloppiness in the quarantine of the ship, where more than 600 people were infected.

They'll have to stop calling this ship a 'quarantine ship' and start calling it an 'incubator ship'. I guess all of the blame should not onto the medical staff. Some of the blame should also go onto those who left the ship without being tested. I'm quite sure they knew full well they should have been tested. Hopefully, the authorities will round them up and make sure they are tested.

The whole scenario of the incubator ship is turning into a comedy of errors, which would be quite funny if it wasn't for the fact that the virus wasn't killing people. Get your crap together Japan!

Watching the TV it’s easy to tell how the jgov are in damage control mode again as they pull up professionals and witnesses to debunk the Kobe uni Dr. then I wake up and real this it’s just adding insult to injury!

@Burning Bush

Doesn’t seem particularly virulent

I am sorry I have to disagree. From what I have been reading it seems that once an infection gets into a community then it spreads very rapidly. Look at what just happened in Daegu area and how fast this spread in China.

I think the article and what happened with the ship demonstrates Japan is not ready to handle this situation. My guess is there are many, many cases in Japan which have not been diagnosed or have not yet been diagnosed.

I think the virus is very virulent and maybe less deadly than originally thought (however there have been some troublesome recent cases where young people have died or are now in ICU).

I was in Singapore for work and I have to say they are the gold standard for dealing with this. Of course they are smaller with less people but they have been developing Standard Operating Procedures for this type of outbreak since SARS struck in 2003 and being there it is very obvious they were prepared.

In a large country like Japan using the Singapore model and asking the local jurisdictions to follow it (rather than trying to deal with it all from Tokyo) would be the right thing to do.

Burning Bush - Doesn’t seem particularly virulent. 

Hmmm? How many cases of a deadly virus would you consider to be virulent?

I doubt 14 day-quarantine is enough. Corona virus may exist in body more than 14 days. Maybe 3 weeks is better.

We will examine what went wrong so we will not repeat the same mistake.

You only get once chance and you blew it, there is no second time!

As Anakin said, “This is where the fun begins!”

14 days quarantine at home?

What about the people living with you? Are they gonna stay away from you? How is bringing you food? A robot?

sorry Japan but you lost control about this situation!

The quarantine was a complete disaster. Yet, no doubt, the Japanese here will ardently defend it as a great success.

It is a British ship and American company cruise.  I am very surprised at the two coutries who do not take responsibiities and watch Japan suffer.

It is a British ship and American company cruise. 

The ship was made in Japan, so it's also Japanese ship. The ship is currently registered in the United Kingdom, but the controlling company is American controlled.

So what do you expect the company to do in practice? If the Japanese government is incapable of sorting out one ship in its waters, what do you expect a Californian cruise company to do?

While Japan is very poor at responding to a crisis, you would still hope that with all the infrastructure and medical facilities on hand, they could do better than a company headquartered thousands of miles away.

its actually worse

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20200222/k10012296751000.html

apparently, people working on ship were never tested either

At a higher level, could this be what you get when the same party rules virtually unopposed since 1955, which selects all its prime ministers from its inner factions, and that consists almost exclusively of an aging generation of men that has been sitting on the comfortable laurel's of power for generations?

Complacency hidden by thick layers of bureaucracy and a spineless media. Everything looks fine until pressure is applied and the cracks start to show.

katyToday  06:52 am JST

Very hard to quarantine more than 3500 people on the ship

my questions are

why CDC of those countries did not advice their governments to evacuate

their citizens from the beginning of quarantine episode ?

They can evacuate their citizens home and take care of them .

In case of the 2nd largest group, American passengers, Japan proposed that, but US requested Japan to keep inside the ship. I guess other countries could be more or less the same. It's much easier for them isn't it.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20200223/k10012297661000.html

Bad decisions backed up by incompetence, can't wait to see what happens during the Tokyo/Fukashima/ Hikydo Olympics. That's a lot of paperwork to get wrong or accidentally shredded. Isn't the point of quarantine testing?

Arrogance,incompetence and the non willingness to listen to other countries advices due to stubbornness brought us to this situation.

And now as usual the deep bows,the apologies etc.

The virus was ALREADY in the ship when it unloaded a very sick passenger in Hong Kong. Quarantine should have started then. It didn’t. The ship carried on as if nothing was wrong. Restaurants and all other activities were as normal. This is when most on board became infected. Was the ships plan to arrive back in Yokohama and just dump the passengers in Japan? The authorities were informed by those in Hong Kong. Japan rightly refused entry of the passengers to Japan. There is no law to force people to quarantine for this disease. Any of the Japanese evacuees from Wuhan could have left their quarantine hotel in Chiba at anytime. Passengers cannot leave the boat unless immigration allows them.

Actually if the quote in this link (Japan today link) is true then it is very bad

https://japantoday.com/category/quote-of-the-day/there-are-still-crew-testing-positive-on-the-ship-yet-people-are-being-allowed-to-disembark-and-told-it's-okay-to-use-public-transportation-to-get-home-then-told-by-the-health-ministry-to-avoid-using-public-transportation-after-they-are-home.

As stated the virus is not going to wait for those from the ship to go home before becoming contagious!

So what do you expect the company to do in practice? If the Japanese government is incapable of sorting out one ship in its waters, what do you expect a Californian cruise company to do?

While Japan is very poor at responding to a crisis, you would still hope that with all the infrastructure and medical facilities on hand, they could do better than a company headquartered thousands of miles away.

If their nations noticed Japan is incapable of everything, why did not their nations evacuated their citizens as soon as possible. Why they took so long to evacuate them after their nations announced the evacuation of citizens? I thought airplanes would come to Japan next day right after they announced evacuation. Why and what did their nations wait for?

Japan evacuated its all citizens in Wuhan very soon. because Japan noticed China is very incapable of what you said.

> tinawatanabe

It is a British ship and American company cruise. I am very surprised at the two coutries who do not take responsibiities and watch Japan suffer.

Exactly, Japan cannot be relied upon to do anything timely, requiring a decision, or Public Health professional thinking. Much better to threaten a doctor and put anyone infected through mass transit. Meanwhile countries took their citizens the moment they could in an additional repudiation of their treatment in Japan, to receive real care in their homelands.

Japanese incompetence due to indecisiveness!

Nippon! Boom! Boom! Boom!

Time for Japan to use its strengths and organizational power and not let this get outta control.

Criminal negligence combined with incredible incompetence at its absolute worst! Heads should roll starting with the guy at the top.

It seem to me nations are incredibly incompetent when they noticed Japan can't do it well about 14 day- quarantine. They should have evacuated their citizens from Japan very very very very soon. If they did not notice it, they seem more incompetent about it.

Quarantine didn't work for the dinosaurs either in Jurassic Park because of something called Chaos Theory.

How come Japanese government is making only wrong decisions?

i am disturbed that Japan didn't have a quarantine center ready and built as part of the preparation for the olympics. in the future, the government needs to do 2 things:

1) create a Japanese version of the CDC

2) find a couple of isolated islands with runways like Mage Island or Iwo Jima and build quarantine and emergency supply centers there.

Twitter is full of new accounts of people who think that they may have new coronavirus and guess what? They need to have A PROOF that they went to China or had contact with someone from CHINA. That's not problem with China only anymore? In Osaka among 5 million inquiries they're testing only 1-5 according to this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxvBlG9Ade0 Of course probably it's not 100% reliable content, but how can you explain that low numbers??

Quarantine didn't work for the dinosaurs either in Jurassic Park because of something called Chaos Theory.

Good history lesson.

In all, it took Japanese officials more than 72 hours to impose a lockdown after they were first notified about the case connected to the ship." Nobody with the power to make a decision. Nobody wants to take responsibility. Endless meetings. The Japanese way.

Watch the tv series Chernobyl and get back to us about the "Japanese way".

@suomitheway - Chernobyl? Please elaborate. I am failing to see the connection here.

The government has literally put millions of people at risk (their health, their livelihoods) via this incredibly irresponsible decision to let people walk off the cruise ship and straight back into society - in some cases without even testing them. It’s just staggering.

And as for the official advice of ‘self quarantine’, you just know that if grandpa starts showing flu-like symptoms, the husband or wife in the house is still going off to work, and the kids are still going out to school.

So many people pointed out that the whole premise of a 14 day quarantine on a cruise ship is largely irrelevant. Someone could easily pick up the virus on the 13th day, and one day later be declared ‘clear’ - and it seems that’s exactly what had happened.

For the people in charge of the country to make these decisions is astonishing.

The poster claimed that "endless meetings" and "nobody wants to take responsibility" are uniquely Japanese.

I am saying otherwise. In fact endless meetings and consensus-driven decision making is very common in Nordic countries, too.

Japan should have rejected the permission of the ship to Yokohama dock in the first place, the ship would have gone back to the port that it sailed from and it would accept all quarantine there. Japan would evacuate half of passengers from there soon.

... we were expecting better from Japan. very gakkuri. shame on you.

Where are the updates and government analysis coming from?

Where is the task force assigned to control the outbreak?

Why doesn’t Japan have a specialist body to prevent infectious diseases?

Why doesn’t any office in Japan study the disease transmission vectors and explain them to the general public?

No wonder masks are being stolen and trains stopped due to a complete lack of information.

23 passengers not tested before leaving cruise ship in Yokohama . . .

Who would've expected anything less? This entire fiasco has been one giant screw up from start to finish.

@rcch “shame on Japan”, why? The govt, yes, but Japan, as a whole? What are you on about. People are seriously ill, people have died, they don’t deserve to be under any “shame” umbrella popped up by you or anyone. Here’s to someone or organization taking over who knows what they are doing ASAP.

Error is a fact of life.

So many people involved, more chances of someone making mistakes. Even computers give error.... when something go wrong

@rcch “shame on Japan”, why? The govt, yes, but Japan, as a whole? What are you on about.

i,m talking about those in charge of making ( the right ) decisions and representing Japan. i,m not talking about 130 million ( innocent ) people. what are you on about.

f their nations noticed Japan is incapable of everything, why did not their nations evacuated their citizens as soon as possible. 

I guess that they did not realise how incompetently it had been handled.

Soooo... I guess this is Britain and/or America's fault again? and Doctor Iwata was wrong and Kato was correct that everything Japan did was perfect?