17 Feb 2020

Coronavirus: Nightmare nearly over for Americans on cruise ship

From Checkpoint, 6:13 pm on 17 February 2020

The cruise that turned into a nightmare for 400 Americans might be over but for 3000 passengers remaining on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, their fate is still up in the air.

The US government evacuated two plane loads of citizens from the ship this morning flying them from Tokyo to military bases in California and Texas where they will remain in quarantine for another 14 days.

It comes as the number of infected passengers has risen to 350. That's the biggest single outbreak outside of China.

Plans to get the 11 remaining New Zealand passengers onboard the ship home are underway but no timeframe has yet been set.

CNN's Will Ripley is in Yokohama. He joins Lisa Owen with the details.