Olympia woman who was stuck on Diamond Princess cruise ship contracts coronavirus
Olympia resident Marianne Obenchain, previously stuck on a cruise ship in Japan because of passengers who had contracted the coronavirus, has tested positive herself after returning to the U.S, according to media reports.
KIRO 7 TV reports that Obenchain and other Americans were evacuated from Japan and taken to Travis Air Force Base in Solano County, California. After her test results came back positive, Obenchain was moved to a hospital in Napa, California, where she is isolation, The Seattle Times reports.
“That news almost floored me,” she told KIRO 7 about the test results. “I wasn’t showing any symptoms.”
“They’re going to keep testing until I test clear,” the 59-year-old Obenchain said. “It’s a terrible thing to say ‘Oh, you’ve got the virus.’ But you know, being here in isolation at Queen of the Valley Hospital is probably the best thing that could’ve happened.”
Coronavirus patients are being held in isolation rooms that have negative pressure to minimize the risk of exposure, Dr. Amy Herold, chief medical officer at Queen of the Valley, said in a statement on the hospital’s website.
Obenchain, who texted with The Olympian from the cruise ship in Japan, was one of about 3,700 passengers and crew who had taken the 16-day cruise through Asia aboard Diamond Princess. The cruise ship was put under quarantine in Yokohama, Japan, for about two weeks.
The Seattle Times reported Obenchain is the second Washingtonian confirmed to have COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus. A 35-year-old Snohomish County man was diagnosed a month ago after returning from a trip to visit family in Wuhan, China. The unnamed man was the first case of coronavirus to be confirmed in the United States. He spent several weeks in an isolation unit at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett before being sent home, where he lives alone.
The United States, Australia, Canada and South Korea flew some passengers from the cruise ship home on chartered planes and quarantined them for two weeks, some on military bases. Obenchain was among hundreds of Americans evacuated by the U.S. government after the Department of Health and Human Services declared Sunday that “passengers and crew members on board are at high risk of exposure.”
In Japan, 443 passengers were allowed to disembark Wednesday after a two-week quarantine aboard the ship. All had tested negative for the virus, according to the Japanese government. But their release caused alarm among some public-health experts, particularly as 79 new coronavirus cases on the ship were announced Wednesday, bringing the total to 621.
This story was originally published February 20, 2020 at 11:36 AM.
