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Coronavirus

Alberta couple aboard quarantined cruise ship

Feb 11, 2020 | 8:33 AM

A couple from Red Deer, Alberta, don’t have a balcony or window in their tiny stateroom as they wait out a quarantine aboard a luxury cruise ship docked in Yokohama, Japan, but they say they’re feeling happy and relaxed despite the close quarters aboard the Diamond Princess.

Lolita and Hans Wiesner were on a 29-day cruise, scheduled to disembark on February 4th and continue on to Europe, when the quarantine was announced.

They say their room is tiny but comfortable, they have good meals and spend their time watching movies, reading books and doing Sudoku.

Princess Cruises confirmed in a statement yesterday that an additional 66 cases of novel coronavirus have been identified aboard the ship, including another illness involving a Canadian.

That brings the total number of Canadians sickened aboard the Diamond Princess to eight.

The new type of coronavirus first surfaced in China late last year and health officials say more than 43-thousand people have been infected since then — most of them in China — with 1,007 deaths, including one death in the Philippines, as the virus has spread to more than two dozen other countries, including Canada.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 11, 2020