A total of 338 Americans were flown home from the Diamond Princess cruise ship off Japan's Yokohama.
Thirteen
US citizens deemed "high risk" for the deadly new
coronavirus
are being treated at a federally designated facility in the
University of Nebraska following their evacuation from a cruise ship
in Japan, officials said.
A
total of 338 Americans were flown home from the Diamond Princess
cruise ship off Japan's Yokohama, touching down first at Travis Air
Force Base in California shortly before midnight Sunday.
The
second flight arrived early Monday at Joint Base San
Antonio-Lackland, Texas.
"A
select number of high risk patients were transported onward from both
locations using those same aircraft to Omaha, Nebraska for care at
the University of Nebraska," Health and Human Services official
Robert Kadlec told reporters.
State
Department official William Walters added these included six
passengers from the base in California and seven from the base in
Texas.
Some
of these included spouses and it was not clear how many had tested
positive for the COVID-19
virus.
Shortly
before the flights left Japan, US officials were informed that 14 of
the passengers, tested days earlier, had received positive results.
Some
patients were also being treated at hospitals near the California.
The
medical staff in Nebraska are re-testing the cases for themselves,
after those patients were placed in isolated areas of the two planes
for the journey home.
"Until
we're done with testing they'll be self-isolated to their room,"
Shelly Schwedhelm, an official at the University of Nebraska Medical
Center, said in a separate briefing.
She
added that 12 of the patients were in a quarantine unit while one was
in a bio-containment facility -- one of three selected in the country
to care for US citizens evacuated from Africa with the Ebola virus.
Forty
other US citizens who had been on the ship and had previously tested
positive were being treated in Japanese hospitals and were not
allowed to fly.
