US flies passengers home from Coronavirus cruise ship in Japan as Britons say they have been abandoned
British citizens trapped on a cruise ship rife with coronavirus may be quarantined in Japan, it emerged yesterday, as they accused the Foreign Office of abandoning them.
Ministers were last night resisting pressure to repatriate 78 Britons after the US, Canada, Hong Kong, South Korea and Italy stepped up efforts to rescue their respective passengers.
Thousands of people were quarantined on the Diamond Princess at the Japanese port of Yokohama following an outbreak of the deadly illness. At least 355 of them were infected, making it the largest cluster of coronavirus cases outside mainland China.
It comes as cases in China rose to more than 70,000 on Monday morning. 1,770 people have now been killed by the virus.
