“Unsung Heroes” from Ukraine aboard the Diamond Princess liner. What is happening to them?

Two of the 25 Ukrainian crew members aboard the cruise ship have been infected with coronavirus, and almost nothing is known about the others.

For three weeks now, the cruise liner Diamond Princess has been moored at the port of the Japanese city of Yokohama, where an outbreak of coronavirus was discovered on board. Due to the quarantine imposed on the ship, which originally sailed the route Kagoshima — Hong Kong — Okinawa, nearly 4,000 people have been trapped.  

Of these 4,000 people, nearly every fifth one tested for the COVID-19 virus was found to be infected. Excluding China, the source of the spread of the deadly infection, no other country has officially recorded as many infected people as on Diamond Princess.

The United States, Canada, Italy, Australia and South Korea have already begun the process of returning their citizens home, but 25 Ukrainian crew members of the liner remain in Japan. Two of them, a man and a woman, have been found to have coronavirus, and they are currently in a hospital in Tokyo.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry says that the “condition of our compatriots is improving”; however, — as MP Mykhailo Radutskyi — notes that it is not yet possible to say they have rid themselves of the deadly disease, since the tests confirming their recovery have not yet been done.

Almost nothing is known about what is happening on board with the 23 Ukrainians working for Princess Cruises and still remaining on Diamond Princess. Natalie, the cruise director on the liner, last week published a video in which she stated that everything is fine with the crew on the ship: everyone, apparently, is holding up well, although there is plenty of work and it is constantly changing. 

It all looks too festive, but this is hardly surprising. “If she had said that everything was bad, the captain would have thrown her overboard,” — jokingly and on condition of anonymity says a former employee of another large American cruise company, Royal Caribbean, speaking to TK Media.

“Things are very bad there, to put it mildly,” — the interlocutor suggests. — “Everyone on the ship is very afraid of norovirus, which causes severe diarrhea, and this happens on every cruise with about 10 people. If more than 4% of passengers are sitting on the toilet, they announce almost a quarantine, and the ship has to be cleaned round the clock every half hour with all kinds of chemicals. And if it is coronavirus, which has an incubation period of 14 days, I can't even imagine what is going on there.”

The names of the Ukrainians on board Diamond Princess are not disclosed, and contacting them for comment proved harder than expected. It was not possible to reach a Ukrainian woman who works with Princess Cruises and regularly goes on cruises via social media: personal messages on Facebook and Instagram had not been read in 4 days.

“I think it is almost impossible to find out anything from the crew at the moment,” — says a person with considerable experience on such cruises. — “I am 100% sure they were all told to keep their mouths shut to avoid trouble. They may even have cut off the internet.”

And while passengers on the liner are being offered the most comfortable conditions possible, with food and drinks delivered to their rooms, free internet, television and board games, the working conditions for crew members have hardly become more comfortable. There are changes in schedules, changes in usual duties and, ultimately, the need to potentially put their own health at risk.

“They were practically ordered to take care of all these potentially sick people,” — says Kent Frayshur, a 43-year-old passenger from Portland (Oregon, US), in an interview with Time. — “They have become something like unsung heroes.”

The Embassy of Ukraine in Japan is reportedly in contact with our citizens on board and says it is ready to provide assistance, but the fact that there are already first deaths (on Thursday it became known about the deaths of two elderly Japanese men, and another died the day before) is alarming. Especially against the backdrop of recent comments from Japanese infectious disease expert Kentaro Iwata, who reported “absolute chaos” on board.

“I was very frightened while on board Diamond Princess,” — said a professor at Kobe University. — “The situation on the cruise ship is completely inadequate in terms of infection control.” Iwata has already apologized for his comment, but in doing so has only left more questions than answers. 

After all passengers and crew members leave Diamond Princess, the cruise company plans to carry out a large-scale sanitary procedure and put the liner back into service on a new cruise, but something suggests that even big discounts risk not being enough of a lure.

Vasily Obaraz, TK Media