UPDATED: 2/14/20, 8:58 a.m.
Two Hawaii residents have fallen ill with coronavirus while on the Diamond Princess, the quarantined cruise ship, and are hospitalized in Japan.
Hawaii Lt. Gov. Josh Green told HPR Thursday that he spoke with the older man, who told him he thinks he believes he caught the sickness shortly after leaving Hong Kong nearly three weeks ago. He said he may have been exposed to the virus while he in a sauna with a sick individual.
Green initially said media reports that the infected resident is a woman was erroneous. But said Friday that there are two residents -- one man and one woman who are infected and unrelated.
The Hawaii man is now recovering in a hospital in Japan. In order to be cleared by the hospital, he must test negative for the virus for two days in a row.
Green said the man’s spouse and other relative on the ship are not sick. There is no timeline for when the residents will return to Hawaii.
The state will coordinate with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal agencies before the cruise ship passengers are allowed to come back to the islands, the lieutenant governor said.
There are still no confirmed cases of coronavirus in Hawaii. Green said a Hawaii man in quarantine at Pearl Harbor who had traveled to Hubei Province in China still shows no symptoms.
Forty-seven people are self-monitoring and voluntarily remaining at home after returning from China, the state Department of Health said in an emailed update on Thursday. The department has been in touch with the individuals and none are showing signs of the virus.
On Friday, the Associated Press reported that China saw another sharp rise in the number of people infected with the virus. There are now 63,851 confirmed cases in mainland China, of which 1,380 have died.
The acceleration in the number of cases does not necessarily represent a sudden surge in new infections. The numbers have been rising more quickly after Hubei Province, where the outbreak started, changed the way it counted cases.
