COVID-19 patients on Diamond Princess Japan 2020

A total of 712 people were infected with COVID-19 on the Diamond Princess cruise ship – 567 passengers and 145 crew members. The cruise ship, which had more than 3,500 people on board, was quarantined for around two weeks. All passengers and crew members had finally disembarked the ship by March 1, 2020.

What happened on the cruise ship?

The Diamond Princess cruise ship was on a 14-day round trip that departed from Yokohama, Japan, on January 20, 2020. The turnaround of passengers and crew was delayed upon the ship’s arrival back in Yokohama because a guest tested positive for COVID-19 after disembarking in Hong Kong. Screening for the virus took place on board the ship, and as the number of positive cases increased, it was confirmed that the ship would remain quarantined until February 19, 2020. Once the quarantine period was over, people who were cleared of the illness were free to leave the ship. All of the 2,666 guests aboard the Diamond Princess had disembarked by February 27, 2020, and the final group of crew members left the ship a few days later.

The coronavirus outbreak in Japan

The Diamond Princess cruise ship was carrying passengers from around the world, but approximately half of the guests were from Japan. The country tackled the early outbreak of COVID-19, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe lifted a month-long state of emergency in late May. However, an upswing in the number of coronavirus cases has highlighted the complexity of easing lockdown measures while the virus is still a threat. Japan is divided into 47 prefectures, and Tokyo has been the most severely affected.