The SuperStar Aquarius cruise ship carrying more than 1,700 Taiwanese passengers docked at the Port of Keelung at 11:30am yesterday and 128 passengers were tested for 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) infection, including one person with a travel history to Wuhan, China.
Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), head of the Central Epidemic Command Center, in the morning told a news conference that all of the passengers who had been in China recently or had symptoms of infection would be tested for the virus.
All of the results were negative for 2019-nCoV, the center said last night, so everyone onboard would be allowed to disembark and asked to monitor their health for 14 days.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
If a test had been positive for the virus, all of the passengers and crew would have been quarantined on the ship, Chen said.
Although Star Cruises (麗星郵輪), the Hong Kong-based company that operates the ship, said that no one onboard had been in China recently, government information showed that 19 passengers had visited China in the past 14 days and 41 had visited China in the past 30 days, Chen said, adding that the 41 passengers and 29 non-Taiwanese passengers were to be tested.
After boarding the SuperStar Aquarius with disease prevention officers at noon, Chen said that they took samples from 128 people for testing.
The results were available at 9pm.
More than 2,400 passengers and crew were examined for fever or respiratory symptoms, and while no one had a body temperature of 38°C or above, they expanded the criteria for 2019-nCoV testing to include people who had visited China, including Hong Kong and Macau, in the past 30 days, people with an unknown travel history, and those with respiratory symptoms or a body temperature of 37.2°C or above, Chen said.
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