The Diamond Princess cruise ship with 2666 passengers and 1045 crew on board, with an average age of 66 years, on February 3, 2020 was held in quarantine on the ship in Japan’s Yokohama Port due to one passenger testing positive for COVID-19 on February 1, 2020, after they disembarked the ship in Hong Kong on January 25, 2020 and 5 days later develped a fever. [1, 11]
The Diamond Princess left Yokohama on January 20, 2020 for a 14-day cruise to China, Vietnam, and Taiwan, then back to Japan. [8]
On February 20, 2020 it was reported that 2 Japanese passengers in their 80’s had died and 620 were “infected” or PCR positive for COVID-19. The WHO tweeted “Of all cases outside #China, over 1/2 are among passengers on the #DiamondPrincess cruise ship.” [4, 5, 6]
Japan’s National Center for Global Health and Medicine (NCGM) moved into action and assisted with infection control and patient care. [9]
The Australian government on Feb. 20, 2020 started to “evacuate” over 200 Australians who were onboard – which helped bring the virus into the country! The passengers had already spent 14 days quarantined on board the ship, followed by another 14 days at the Howard Springs quarantine facility close to Darwin. Several fell ill on return to Australia. [7] The same story for around 400 American passengers.
News of this Diamond Princess spread all over the world and the death rate based on unreliable data, added impetus for shutting down the world! [2] But the news that “some 83% (82.7% – 83.9%) of the passengers never got the disease at all” and ” slightly less than half the passengers (48.6% ± 2.0%) who got the disease showed NO symptoms” was not broadcast wide.
In total, only 14 people of the 3711 on board were reported to have died due to the novel virus, half after they had left the ship, with a median age over 80 years. There “are differing opinions as to how many of these deaths should be attributed to Covid. Except for one person in their late 60s, all deaths occurred in those over 70.” Not one crew member died. Three ill patients were given experimental remdesivir, on “compassionate” grounds and apparently survived. The elderly passengers were forced to stay confined in their rooms for 14 days! [3, 12]
The Diamond Princess was meant to be the “worse case scenario” of susceptible elderly in close quarters to those infected, but the data “arguably indicates that the severity may well have been even milder than generally believed, and clearly was of no danger to the non-elderly”