Washington: A senior US health official said Sunday that more than 40 Americans on a quarantined cruise ship in Japan have been infected with the deadly coronavirus and would not be a part of an evacuation effort. "Forty of them have gotten infected," Anthony Fauci, a senior official at the National Institutes for Health said on CBS' Face the Nation show. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Saturday that 400 Americans on the Diamond Princess cruise ship would be evacuated and flown back to the United States where they would face a 14-day quarantine period.

But Fauci said that those confirmed with infections would not be allowed to fly. "They are not going to go anywhere," he said. "They're going to be in hospitals in Japan." Asked about the severity of the infected Americans' illness, Fauci said it varied. "You could be infected and have minimal symptoms, but you still have the possibility of transmitting it to someone else," he said.