Pedestrians don masks to guard against illnesses such as the coronavirus in Tokyo, Thursday, March 12, 2020. (Akifumi Ishikawa/Stars and Stripes)
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YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — The city of Yokosuka has reported its first case of coronavirus, city officials said in a statement Sunday.
The patient, a female nurse in her 70s, had gone to Egypt on a Nile River cruise Feb. 24-26, according to the statement. The woman is not associated with Yokosuka Naval Base, base spokesman Randall Baucom told Stars and Stripes on Monday.
The woman returned to Japan March 1 and symptoms began March 3 with abdominal pain and diarrhea, progressing to a cough and malaise March 8, according to a translation of the city statement. The woman tested positive for the virus on Sunday.
The woman is one of 780 patients in Japan who have tested positive for the coronavirus as of Sunday, according to the World Health Organization. Of those patients, 22 have died. That number does not include the 697 people who tested positive aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship that underwent quarantine in Yokohama Bay last month.
As of Monday, no Navy personnel in Japan have tested positive for coronavirus, according to Naval Forces Japan spokesman Marshall Smith.
At Naval Air Facility Atsugi, about 25 miles northwest of Yokosuka, a kindergartener at Shirley Lanham Elementary School tested negative for the disease and the child’s classmates were cleared to return to school Monday, base officials said in a Facebook post Sunday.
The children’s parents were asked Friday to keep their children home until that test result was known.
