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The United States has begun the evacuation of its citizens who have been for days off the coast of Japan on a quarantined cruise ship where 355 cases of the new coronavirus have been found.

The evacuation comes when the authorities in Japan have increased their warnings about the outbreak, urging citizens to avoid crowded places.

At least 40 of the US citizens who were aboard the ship, the Diamond Princess ocean liner, "will be treated in Japan," said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases.

The US authorities announced on Saturday that they recommended that their citizens on board leave the ship and fly back to the United States. Several countries announced similar measures to evacuate their citizens from the cruise.

On Monday morning the Americans left the ship in groups, going through an improvised passport control, although they did not undergo health checks, said Sara Arana, a Californian passenger.

They then boarded buses, where drivers wore protective suits, and were informed that more than a dozen vehicles would travel in a convoy. "I am happy and ready to go," Arana said before leaving the ship. "We need a correct quarantine, it was not," he added.

The US government should have intervened "much earlier, at the beginning," said this 52-year-old medical social worker. Two charter flights must take cruise passengers to the United States, where one part will remain in quarantine for 14 days at a military base in California and another in Texas.

Refusal to evacuate

Other US citizens rejected the evacuation, despite being warned that they will still have to wait two weeks and test negative for the virus before they can return to the United States.

"My health is fine. And my two weeks of quarantine are almost over. Why would I want to get on a bus and a plane with other people that I think is infected when I've spent almost two weeks isolated from those people?" Matt tweeted Smith, a lawyer aboard the ship with his wife.

This Sunday 355 cases had been recorded on this ship, 70 more compared to Saturday, when 67 new infections were counted compared to Friday. But the 3,711 people who are on board have not all been subjected to the analyzes that allow establishing their eventual contamination.

"So far we have tested 1,219 people," Japanese Health Minister Katsunobu Kato told Japan's NHK network. The end of the cruise ship's quarantine is normally scheduled for February 19, but recent events could change this calendar.

The Diamond Princess made a cruise with several stops in Asia when a passenger who landed in Hong Kong tested positive for the new coronavirus that appeared in the Chinese city of Wuhan. As a result of that case, when the cruise arrived on the shores of Japan, it was not authorized to dock and all the people were quarantined

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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