A total of 256 Canadians took place aboard the Diamond Princess. As of Friday morning, 129 of them returned home on a plane chartered by Ottawa. They will have to undergo an additional two weeks of quarantine at the Center Nav hotel complex in Cornwall, Ontario.
The Canadians infected on the ship had to stay in Japan for hospitalization and medical treatment.
Healthy Canadians who did not return on this aircraft have either already returned home by other means or continued on to other destinations.
Others have chosen to stay in Japan with a sick relative, for example.
As for cruise passengers with the COVID-19 coronavirus, they “are in a dozen hospitals across Yokohama and the capital around Tokyo,” said Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, adding that his staff provided personalized follow-up in each case.
This is the case of Manon Trudel and Julien Bergeron. The 61-year-old woman was not infected with the virus, but her 60-year-old partner contracted the disease. He also suffers from double pneumonia.
According to Ms. Trudel’s sister, Flavie, the couple from Pointe-aux-Trembles is separated in two different hospitals in Japan. Manon Trudel is awaiting confirmation of a second negative test in order to obtain her leave, but she does not intend to return without her partner.
Angry with the minister
According to what Flavie Trudel mentions, her sister and her brother-in-law have a lot on their hearts against the Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois-Philippe Champagne who “did not help them when they needed it,” she said.
The family resents Ottawa for having blindly trusted the Japanese authorities, without knowing the real situation on the ground.
“He accepted the idea of Japan to quarantine on a contaminated boat. A botched quarantine. I imagine that he was misinformed by the Japanese authorities, but he did not check if the information was correct and he should have woken up when he saw that the cases were increasing, “she denounces.
The Trudel-Bergeron couple has also documented the serious breaches of quarantine health rules and alerted the media from all over the planet.
In the opinion of Flavie Trudel, the Canadian government should “bring people here before they are infected”. She points out that the United States reacted much faster and was able to get its citizens out of the boat quickly.
Other deaths
The Japanese Ministry of Health also announced the death of a third hospitalized passenger of the Diamond Princess on Sunday.
He is an octogenarian Japanese who was among the first to show symptoms earlier this month.
New cases were also detected among passengers and crew, bringing the total number of infections among those who were on the Diamond Princess to 691.