MN Couple Still Confined In Cruise Ship Has 'Absolutely No Idea' When They'll Get Out
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Patience is wearing thin among the hundreds of passengers still aboard the coronavirus-stricken Grand Princess Tuesday.
The passengers are awaiting their orders to get off the boat at the Port of Oakland in California, travel to a military base and begin a mandated 14-day quarantine before they will be allowed to return to their homes.
About 150 passengers from Northern California were allowed to exit the ship Monday, go through preliminary medical screening for any sign of the illness and travel to a quarantined facility at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield.
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Officials said it may be two to three days before all of the more than 2,000 passengers exit the ship. The process begins with a knock on the stateroom door and when the door is open, luggage tags and a departure note is there. The note tells the passenger what color coded group they are members of and ask that they be ready to immediate depart with one carry-on when their color is announced over the public address system.
Randy Elkin and Kathleen Duchene are from Forest Lake, Minnesota, and are still confined to their stateroom.
"Just as soon as we left Hawaii (on the return trip to the Bay Area) we were kept off the walking deck because of really bad weather," Elkin told CBS affiliate KPIX 5 in a phone interview. "So it's more like 8 or 9 days where we've been cooped up. No exercise. So it's getting to be a little big wearing."'
The couple has no idea when they'll get off the cruise ship.
"We have absolutely no idea," Duchene said. "We haven't received any notification or luggage tags indicating when we will be cycled out."
Elkin added that details on the deboarding process have been shifting.
"We heard of so many conflicting stories," he said. "It changes almost daily."
Late Saturday night, state and federal officials agreed to allow the ship to dock in Oakland on Monday and the lengthy deboarding process began at the dock within the busy commercial Port Of Oakland.