Coronavirus: Utah man moved from cruise ship to hospital amid quarantine

SALT LAKE CITY — A Tooele County man who has been quarantined aboard a cruise ship due to exposure to the novel coronavirus since Jan. 6 has now been moved to a Japanese hospital.

John Haering was taken to a hospital in Yokohama after suffering flu-like symptoms for about three days, according to his wife, Melanie Haering, also a passenger aboard the ship. In Facebook post she described his symptoms, including a fever, nausea and a rash, as “like a heavy case of the flu.”

“We’ve seen two sets of doctors,” she wrote in a post Wednesday morning. “He has not been swabbed.”

In a text to the Deseret News Wednesday night, she said he’d just left for the hospital, and wondered why her husband wasn’t swabbed when he first developed a fever.

“We got a call from one of the ship’s medical teams, and they have decided to transport John to a hospital,” Melanie Haering said in a Facebook post about 1 a.m. Thursday, which was Thursday evening in Japan. “I have no idea which one he will be at. Even though he felt better, he needs the proper care to find out about this virus. It’s hard being separated from him, and as soon as I hear more information, I will pass it on. We appreciate the overwhelming love and prayers that have been offered on our behalf. Believe me, we can feel them.”

The Haerings are one of two Utah couples on the ship, which carried thousands of passengers, on a 29-day trip that included stops in Kagoshima, Tokyo, Okinawa, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Thailand. St. George resident Mark Jorgensen, who is traveling with his wife, Jerri, said they began hearing about the coronavirus — now named COVID-19 — a day or two into the cruise, although they weren’t worried about being exposed to it.

“There is a new strain of flu every year,” Jorgensen said. “But over the course of this trip, we started to hear more and more.”

The couple enjoyed a memorable trip that included celebrating the Lunar New Year in Hong Kong. But when they docked in Okinawa, one of the last stops, the screening process was so tight it took four hours for passengers to leave the ship.

“We didn’t see much of that place,” Jorgensen said. “We walked around a couple of hours, and then spent two more days at sea. Then, on the last day, we packed our bags before dinner, put them in the hall, and then they announced at dinner that someone who started the cruise in Tokyo had gotten off in Hong Kong because he wasn’t feeling well. He didn’t tell anyone he was sick. He just got off and stayed off. A couple of days later, he got tested, and it was coronavirus.”

After that, officials said they needed 24 hours to screen passengers.

“All through the night they were screening people,” he said. “They found several people with temperatures, tested them and found 10 people positive. That’s when they said we’d be quarantined for two weeks.”

Somehow passengers were led to believe that two-week clock started over every time a new case was diagnosed.

“That was distressing,” Jorgensen said, noting new cases have been found every day. “But then we got a message from the embassy that our quarantine was scheduled to end on Feb. 19, and we could fly home on commercial flights. And there wouldn’t be further quarantine in the U.S.”

Jorgensen kept track of the number of patients diagnosed each day — 10, 10, 2, 65, 38, 44. Now with 218 patients, the ship is reported to have the highest concentration of coronavirus victims outside China.

“I’m kind of a unique case,” Jorgensen said. “I am immunosuppressed because I’ve had two kidney transplants (1995 and 2015).”

The quarantine confines passengers to their rooms for days at a time.

“We can’t leave our rooms for any reason, except when they call groups, sections, to go on to the upper deck to walk around for an hour. We’ve had two of those (hours) since last Wednesday.”

Jorgensen is receiving medication for free, and the cruise line has told them they’re refunding the cost of their trip — including airfare.

Both couples have posted upbeat messages on Facebook, thanking family and friends for their support, and the cruise line for the way they’ve handled the situation.

“They’ve been amazing,” Jerri Jorgensen said in a Facebook Live video posted Wednesday night. “Just the logistical nightmare. That’s a huge curveball … a situation where everyone has to have room service three times a day.”

The Jorgensens were interviewed for an appearance on the “Today Show” that will air Thursday morning. It’s their second appearance.

They began posting Facebook Live videos because they’ve been overwhelmed with calls, texts, emails and media request.

“We’re not as famous as the Kardashians,” Mark Jorgensen said. “But twice as sexy.”

Meanwhile, a third Utah couple is quarantined on Holland America ship— Steve and June Gulbrandsen, of Bountiful. Their ship was looking for a place to dock, and they’d been at sea for 12 days as cities denied them a place to stop. The cruise began in Hong Kong and was supposed to end Saturday in Shanghai, but Shanghai has already said it won’t allow the ship to dock.

“They then changed the destination to Tokyo, then Tokyo denied it,” Steve Gulbrandsen said in an interview Tuesday. “Then they started moving toward Guam, and Guam denied us. Then they said they had a port in Thailand. We went almost all the way to Thailand and apparently, Thailand has said in the press that they’re not going to let us in.”

Like the Jorgensens and Haerings, the Gulbrandsens said cruise line personnel have been “wonderful.”

“The crew and staff have been wonderful and doing the best they can,” Gulbrandsen said. “But as I said, this could turn into a humanitarian crisis with the lack of important medicines and also the lack of medical care,” he said. “Also, it’s just a frightening feeling to be floating around in the ocean and know that you can’t get on land.”

Contributing: Alex Cabrero