The country's largest workers group Trade Union Congress of the Philippines assailed the Japanese government for making the Filipino crew of Diamond Princess cruise ship as sacrificial lambs to the highly contagious coronavirus disease following an admission of its top executive that the quarantine measure for the ship was flawed resulting to the contamination of its crews and passengers virus.
"It is now clear the Japanese government knew that the quarantine procedures for the crew—many of whom were Filipinos—were both inadequate and imperfect and would likely result in further spreading of the nCoV virus endangering everyone's life-and-limb," TUCP vice president Louie Corral said in a statement.
Dr. Norio Ohmagari, the director of the Disease Control and Prevention Center at the government-funded National Center for Global Health and Medicine and is a member of government panel of experts advising Tokyo on the novel coronavirus outbreak said that the quarantine of the cruise ship "may not have been perfect."
The "tough decision," he said, had been made by the Japanese government to allow the cruise workers to keep working aboard the vessel, despite the risk of infection, to ensure the smooth running of the cruise ship.
He said that by failing to isolate the crew of the Diamond Princess from the beginning of the quarantine,infected workers may have passed on "secondary or tertiary" infections to their fellow crew members and passengers, thereby exacerbating the deadly outbreak.