FAIRFIELD, Calif. — What started as a sunny beach vacation for one Bandon couple has turned into a two-week long quarantine at an air force base in California.
The couple says the Grand Princess cruise was halfway over and headed to Mexico when crews were told to turn around.
NBC News reports 21 people on the ship have tested positive for coronavirus.
Now, Michael and Kathleen Sterling are some of the thousands of people trapped at the Travis Air Force base.
The couple says passengers couldn’t leave their room for 5 to 6 days until they reached port. But things only got worse when they got there.
Kathleen says her elderly father and his wife were sick and crews wouldn’t let them off the boat to get medical attention.
At one point, Kathleen made a sign and hung it over the balcony of their room.
It says “My dad is sick… 81 years old… congestive heart failure and asthma… fever last night. Get him off this ship.”
She says they watched people from Canada and other places get off the boat first while her sick father and his wife were stuck on the boat for almost two days.
“I personally am horrified that they left so many critically and, now I know, they were critically ill people on the ship up until Wednesday and they were letting other healthy people off,” she said.
After they finally got off the boat, Kathleen says they were told if they didn’t have coronavirus symptoms, they wouldn’t be tested for the virus.
Right now, she says all they do is take their temperatures twice a day.
It will be another 12 days before the couple and the other quarantined passengers go home.
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