Tokyo: An unspecified number of Indians were among the nearly 3,000 passengers and crew members on board a cruise ship quarantined off Japan due to diagnosis of coronavirus cases, the Indian Embassy here said on Monday.
Cruise ship Diamond Princess, carrying 3,711 people, arrived at the Japanese coast early last week and was quarantined after a passenger who de-boarded last month in Hong Kong was found to be the carrier of the novel virus on the ship.
Around 60 people tested positive of the virus on Monday, taking the total number of those infected on the ship to 130. Authorities had initially tested nearly 300 people when the ship arrived at the Japanese coast.
Indian Embassy in Tokyo on Monday tweeted the information about the Indians on the ship.
“Many Indian crew & some Indian passengers are on board the cruise ship Diamond Princess quarantined off Japan due to Coronavirus (nCoV),” it tweeted, without giving a specific number of Indians on the ship.
Quoting an Indian crew member, identified as Binay Kumar Sarkar, on-board Diamond Express, NDTV news channel said there are 160 Indian crew members and eight Indian passengers on the ship.
Sarkar, in a video recorded from the ship, appealed to the Indian government and the UN to segregate the Indians on board on urgent basis.
“None of them have been checked (for coronavirus),” Sarkar, a chef from Bengal, said in Hindi.
