The US State Department will dispatch two planes to evacuate citizens from Diamond Princess, a yacht that is quarantined in Japan due to the corona virus.

Dr. Henry Walke of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday said about 380 Americans and their family members aboard the Diamond Princess yacht docked in the port of Yokohama, Japan will be sent home. two flights are coordinated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The flights are expected to return to the US as early as February 16.

The Diamond Princess, carrying 3,711 passengers and crew, was quarantined at the Port of Yokohama on February 4 after an 80-year-old passenger from Hong Kong last month tested positive for nCoV. The ship currently has 218 people positive for the virus, becoming the second largest outbreak outside of China.

A team of CDC experts is in Japan to assess the health of passengers. People with fever, cough or other symptoms will not be allowed to board the flight back to the US, according to Walke.

After returning, the group will probably be taken to Travis Air Force Base in California state for medical examination. Some people may be required to stay in Travis for compulsory isolation for 14 days. Others may be transferred to Lackland Air Base in Texas for quarantine.

The Travis base is an isolated area of about 230 Americans removed from Wuhan earlier this month. These people will be separated from the returning group from Diamond Princess.

Diamond Princess is owned by the US-based Princess Cruises, operated by Carnival Japan Inc. Experts say that the quarantine measures of Japanese officials are not effective, even making the virus spread faster because many people are concentrated in the narrow space on the ship.

The outbreak of corona pneumonia (Covid-19) started in December 2019 in Wuhan, Hubei province in central China and then appeared in 27 countries and territories. The epidemic has killed 1,526 people and infected 67,100 people, mostly in mainland China.