Richland couple evacuated from cruise ship as deadly coronavirus was spreading

A Richland couple is back in the United States after being evacuated from a quarantined cruise ship where the coronavirus was spreading among passengers and crew.

Tim and Gail Howe were on the plane chartered by the U.S. government that arrived from Japan at Travis Air Force Base in California shortly before midnight Sunday.

“The eagle has landed,” Tim Howe’s daughter, Amy Howe, of Oklahoma, posted on social media early Monday morning. “I just received the telephone call I have (been) waiting anxiously to receive.”

Now her father and step-mother will be quarantined at the base for 14 days to make sure they do not have the novel coronavirus.

Another plane also took some of the more than 300 U.S. passengers who had been on the Diamond Princess docked near Tokyo to Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, according to the Associated Press.

Fourteen passengers tested positive for the coronavirus but had no symptoms as they were checked before boarding planes. They were allowed to return to the United States in an isolation area set up on the planes

It was not clear Monday if those passengers were on one or both planes and where they would be isolated in the United States.

Time magazine reported there have been at least 454 confirmed cases of coronavirus on the Diamond Princess, with most of those people taken to Japanese hospitals for treatment.

The ship had 2,666 passengers and 1,045 crew members when the Japanese quarantine was announced Feb. 4.

Tim and Gail Howe had boarded the Diamond Princess Jan. 4 for a four-week cruise, and were expecting to get off the ship when it docked in Japan Feb. 4.