Thanks.
I guess that explains the difference in how the two situations (our ppl who were in Wuhan/China, flown home, vs our ppl on this ship) were/are being handled.
I wonder what changed the treaty process, for this particular ship, to now allow them to disembark/evacuate).
Quarantine time had been restarting, after each new case was confirmed.
Yes, quarantine time starting over after each new case in a closed environment is *normal*. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
What likely changed is not the treaty but the two governments negotiating around it, and the US fulfilling conditions to placate the Japanese government. Japan is not China - they have thousands of years of history with plagues getting loose on their islands with horrific effects and they *will* enforce quarantines no matter what. Combined with their current demographic crisis, they are not willing to allow a plague in when they can do something about it.
Consider that without the treaties in place, it is entirely possible that the Japanese government could have ordered their naval forces to sink the ship at sea and refuse to allow survivors off, by machine gunning them if necessary. The Japanese are that serious about it, and if you look at their history plus current population problems you can see why. The Japanese can’t afford to lose much more population and remain Japanese.
Given all that, I expect that Japan’s conditions for breaking the quarantine involve things like asymptomatic passengers having to be taken off in NBC (nuclear-bio-chemical) containment suits, the suit exteriors having to be fully decontaminated prior to boarding a transport vehicle, and them being sealed into the suits and not allowed out of the suits until they are out of Japan and beyond the point of no return, if then. Hopefully these passengers will be taken straight to a US quarantine facility with strict enforcement.