Day 11: The First and Fourth Germ Boats

For those playing the home game, the first germ boat was the World Dream, on a five-day cruise starting January 19th from Guangzhou to Vietnam to Hong Kong. Eventually eight cases were identified from this cruise, and as a consequence a later batch of tourists have been quarantined off Hong Kong out of concern that the crew may have been infected. Those 3,600 passengers were just released on Sunday, despite not having completed fourteen days of quarantine (because the crew were cleared).

The second germ boat is the Diamond Princess, quarantined for an ever-restarting 14 days off Yokohama, where the food tweeter tweets on.

The third germ boat was the Anthem of the Seas out of Bayonne, NJ, which had no actual cases.

The fourth germ boat is the Holland America ship the MS Westerdam, originally meant to dock in Yokohama on Valentine's Day (this coming Friday).

According to passengers on board, they’ve been denied at “every port” since leaving Hong Kong in early February.

Fox reports that, fortunately for them, Thailand has agreed to let them dock in Laem Chabang on Thursday.

PlagueBlog prefers the term "germ boat", though, in deference to common parlance, germ boat posts have been tagged "plague ships".

In other coronavirus news, a lucky thirteenth case has been confirmed in the US: an evacuee in San Diego who, despite testing positive, was initially released by the CDC into the wild quarantine quarters, but has since been returned to hospital.

P.S. The WHO has finally named the virus "COVID-19". While we understand that "Please stop eating the bats already, folks" was not an option, PlagueBlog maintains that "Wuhan coronavirus" could hardly do Wuhan's reputation or China's face any additional damage at this point. You'd have to go with something like "Wenliang coronavirus" to manage that.

P.P.S. COVID-19 celebrated its new name with a record 45,000 cases, as well as an additional 39 cases on the Germ Boat (for a total of 174 cases, but the food tweeter tweets on).