More than 3,500 people on board the Grand Princess cruise ship left in limbo off the San Francisco coast will learn their fate Friday — when dozens of coronavirus test results are expected to come in.
The California Air National Guard air-dropped coronavirus testing kits to the ship on Thursday in a dramatic operation caught on video.
Medical officials collected samples from 45 people on board — some of whom showed symptoms — and flew them to a lab in Richmond, the cruise line said, according to CNN.
No one is allowed off the ship pending the results, which are expected Friday, Mary Ellen Carroll of the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management told the network.
A total of 2,422 guests and 1,111 crew members representing 54 different nationalities are on board the vessel, according to Princess Cruises.
The Grand Princess was traveling to Ensenada, Mexico, but instead headed Wednesday to San Francisco following news that a 71-year-old passenger died from the virus after returning home, the company said.
The cruise line attributed the travel change to health officials investigating a “small cluster” of recent passengers with the virus in Northern California.
In addition, the ship’s voyage to Hawaii, which was scheduled to depart March 7, has been canceled, Princess Cruises confirmed. All guests will receive a full refund of their cruise fare.
Meanwhile, police in Sunnyvale, Calif., announced Thursday that officers performed CPR on an unconscious patient who was not breathing.
The patient did not survive — and it was later determined that the person had recently been on a cruise with two passengers suspected of having Covid-19, the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety tweeted.
“Although it has not yet been determined by Santa Clara County Public Health whether or not the patient had COVID-19, we are taking every step possible to ensure the safety and well being of the officers on the call,
the members of our department and the Sunnyvale community,” department chief Phan Ngo said at a press conference,
.
Ngo explained that the seven officers did not use mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but were quarantined at a city facility “out of an abundance of caution” for several hours and have since returned home.
Ngo did not specify whether the person had been on board the Grand Princess specifically.
Princess Cruises previously made headlines over a quarantined Diamond Princess cruise in Japan that had more than 700 passengers infected with the virus.
A number of the US evacuees from the ship were flown to California.
