About 35 British passengers return to their homeland today, Saturday, after more than two weeks remained trapped in a cruise ship imposed on a quarantine in a Japanese port due to the outbreak of the Coronavirus. The plane carrying these passengers will land at a Ministry of Defense airport in southwest England, and they will be taken directly to quarantined facilities.
The Diamond Princess was carrying 3,700 passengers, including 78 Britons, when they were quarantined in Yokohama on February 5 after it was confirmed that a man who had arrived in Hong Kong had been infected with the Coruna virus.
More than 620 passengers on board the ship were infected with the virus, the largest number infected with the virus outside the Chinese mainland.
Some British passengers were already evacuated over the past week on planes to Hong Kong, according to the BBC. Others were treated in health facilities in Japan.
At least four Britons were infected with the virus on board, but tests showed no people arriving today Saturday were infected with the virus.
By Friday afternoon, 5,549 people had been tested overall in Britain to see if they were infected with the Coronavirus and nine of them had been infected.