SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Twenty-one people aboard a mammoth cruise ship
off the California coast tested positive for the new coronavirus and 19
of them are crew members, Vice President Mike Pence announced Friday,
amid evidence the vessel was the breeding ground for a deadly cluster of
more than 10 cases during its previous voyage.

He said federal
officials were working with California authorities on a plan to bring
the ship to a non-commercial port. There was no immediate word on where
or when the vessel will dock, and in the meantime, everyone on aboard
was keeping to themselves in their rooms.

“All passengers and
crew will be tested for the virus,” Pence said. “Those that will need to
be quarantined will be quarantined. Those who will require medical help
will receive it.”

Pence said 46 of the more than 3,500 people
aboard were tested in the first round. A military helicopter crew
lowered test kits onto the 951-foot (290-meter) Grand Princess by rope
Thursday and later retrieved them for analysis as the vessel waited off
San Francisco, under orders to keep its distance from shore.

Health
officials trying to establish whether the virus is circulating on the
Grand Princess undertook the testing after reporting that a passenger on
a previous voyage of the ship, in February, died of the disease.

In
the past few days, health authorities disclosed that at least 10 other
people who were on the same journey also were found to be infected. And
some passengers on that trip stayed aboard for the current voyage —
increasing crew members’ exposure to the virus.

“We know the
coronavirus manifested among the previous passengers … we will be
testing everyone on the ship, we will be quarantining as necessary,”
Pence said. “We anticipate that they will be quarantined on the ship,
they will not need to disembark.”

Princess Cruises said the ship’s
doctor would inform passengers and crew of their results after
confirmation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Another
Princess ship, the Diamond Princess, was quarantined for two weeks in
Yokohama, Japan, last month because of the virus, and ultimately about
700 of the 3,700 people aboard became infected in what experts
pronounced a public-health failure, with the vessel essentially becoming
a floating germ factory.

Meanwhile, the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus climbed to 14, with all but one victim in Washington state,
while the number of infections swelled to over 200, scattered across
about half the states. Pennsylvania, Indiana, Minnesota and Nebraska
reported their first cases.

On Wall Street, stocks swung wildly
as fears mounted over the potential damage to the global economy from
factory shutdowns, travel bans, quarantines and cancellations of events
big and small — a list that grew to include the world-famous South by Southwest arts festival in Austin, Texas, which was set to begin next week.

President Donald Trump signed an $8.3 billion measure to help public health agencies deal with crisis and spur development of vaccines and treatments.

Worldwide, the virus has infected
more than 100,000 people and killed over 3,400, the vast majority of
them in China. Most cases have been mild, and more than half of those
infected have recovered.

Most of the dead in the U.S. were from
suburban Seattle’s Life Care Center nursing home, now the subject of
federal and state investigations that could lead to sanctions, including
a possible takeover of its management. Washington state has the
nation’s biggest concentration of cases, with at least 70.

Thirty
medical professionals from the U.S. Public Health Service will arrive
Saturday at the nursing home to help care for patients and provide
relief to the exhausted staff, said Dow Constantine, executive in charge
of Seattle’s King County.

“We are grateful the cavalry is arriving. It will make rapid change in the conditions there,” he said.

The nursing home was down to 69 residents after 15 were taken to the hospital in the preceding 24 hours, Constantine said.

Some
major businesses in the Seattle area — including Microsoft and Amazon,
which together employ more than 100,000 people in the region — have shut
down operations or urged employees to work from home. The University of
Washington called off classes at its three Seattle-area campuses for
the next two weeks and will instead teach its 57,000 students online.
And a comics convention next week in Seattle that was expected to draw
about 100,000 people was canceled.

In California, the ship was returning to San Francisco after visiting Hawaii.

A
Sacramento-area man who sailed aboard the Grand Princess last month
during a visit to a series of Mexican ports later succumbed to the
virus, California authorities said. Others who were on that voyage also
have tested positive in Northern California, Nevada, and Canada.

Three
dozen passengers on the Grand Princess have had flu-like symptoms over
the past two weeks or so, said Mary Ellen Carroll, executive director of
San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management.

An
epidemiologist who studies the spread of virus particles said the
recirculated air from a cruise ship’s ventilation system, plus the close
quarters and communal settings, make passengers and crew vulnerable to
infectious diseases.

“They’re not designed as quarantine
facilities, to put it mildly,” said Don Milton of the University of
Maryland. “You’re going to amplify the infection by keeping people on
the boat.”

He said the fallout from the ship quarantined in Japan
demonstrates the urgent need to move people off the ship and into a
“safer quarantine environment.”

Steven Smith and his wife,
Michele, of Paradise, California, said they are a bit worried but feel
safe in their room aboard the Grand Princess.

“What’s given us
hope is that the system that is in place, our government, the CDC, we
feel is doing a remarkable job,” Steven Smith said.

Associated Press writers Janie Har and Daisy Nguyen in San Francisco; Gene Johnson, Martha Bellisle and Carla K. Johnson in Seattle; Rachel La Corte in Olympia, Washington; and AP researcher Monika Mathur in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

News 8’s Dr. Mary Gillis DEd took questions on the coronavirus from viewers live on Facebook Friday afternoon.