TOKYO, Japan — An East Tennessee couple who has been in quarantine on a cruise ship off the coast of Japan amid the coronavirus outbreak won't be coming home for at least a few more weeks after the wife tested positive for the virus.
Dr. Arnold and Jeanie Hopland of Elizabethton, Tennessee, were on the Diamond Princess cruise ship and when the ship was put on quarantine. Jeanie Hopland tested positive for the disease just hours before she was supposed to be leaving the ship over the weekend. According to her husband, she has since been taken to a hospital in Tokyo where she is in a room with two other women who also tested positive.
Arnold Hopland said he's now confined to his cabin on the ship. He tells 10News he will remain on the ship for another two weeks unless there's an additional evacuation flight to rescue him.
"I expect such a thing to happen in the next few days," he said.
The Diamond Princess cruise ship had been quarantined off the Yokohama shore for 13 days.
Hopland said they were notified of his wife's positive test right before they were planning to fly back to the United States.
He said their room steward tested positive and believes that's how she got it.
"When we were notified, they asked if I would like to return to the United States leaving Jeanie here in Japan," Hopland said. "I chose to stay as close as I could to my wife here in Japan."
He said when his wife was diagnosed, she was not feeling symptomatic.