The diamond princess was placed in a 14-day quarantine in early February.
Washington, United States:
Fourteen people who tested positive for the new corona virus were among more than 300 U.S. citizens and family members who were evacuated by plane from a quarantined ship in Japan, the U.S. State Department said Monday.
Passengers had already disembarked from the Diamond Princess and were preparing to return to the United States by chartered plane when U.S. officials were informed that 14 of them that had been tested the previous day were positive for COVID-19, it said in a joint statement with the Ministry of Health and Human Services (HHS).
After consulting HHS, the State Department decided to admit her on board, but isolated her from the other passengers.
"The fastest and safest way to get these people into a special security area on the evacuation plane was to isolate them according to standard protocols," it said.
"During the flights, these people will continue to be isolated from the other passengers."
All passengers were closely monitored during the flights.
"Anyone who becomes symptomatic will be taken to the special security area where they will be treated," the statement said.
The first flight will shortly land at a U.S. Air Force base in California, where all passengers will be quarantined for 14 days while a second aircraft flies to another base in San Antonio, Texas.
In the United States, more than 600 people are already in quarantine who had previously been evacuated from the virus epicenter in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the disease control and prevention centers said on Friday.
(Except for the headline, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and published from a syndicated feed.)
