WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Passengers of the cruise ship Grand Princess have begun disembarking at a port in northern San Francisco after being held off the coast for days with 21 people on board tested positive for coronavirus.
The ship, carrying more than 3,500 passengers and crew members, docked Monday afternoon at a commercial dock in the port of Oakland. More than 2,000 passengers will disembark under heavy military security, and the process will reportedly take several days.
Vice President Mike Pence said at a news conference that all passengers from California will be taken to Travis Air Force Base in Miramars for quarantining. The remaining American passengers will be transported through very carefully controlled environments on buses out to the tarmac and flown to military bases in Georgia and Texas.
All the passengers will be tested, isolated and quarantined upon arriving there.
Passengers from Canada and the UK will be transported directly to the tarmac, and sent back home on charter flights for quarantine. The remaining people on the ship, including the crew, will be quarantined and observed and treated on board.
Two infected passengers and 19 crew members are quarantined on board the cruise liner.
All the 25 children on the ship were found to be healthy in screening, Pence told reporters.
Meanwhile, a couple, who were passengers of the ship, have filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles claiming more than $1 million in damages from the cruise line.
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