440 Filipino staff-crew from NCL cruise vessels in the USA arrived home on Friday, April 10, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) announced. In a statement, DFA said that the repatriated seafarers were from the cruise liners Norwegian Pearl, Norwegian Sky and Norwegian Sun.
They all arrived in Manila (Luzon Island, Philippines) Friday morning by a chartered flight organized by local manning agency CF Sharp and the Philippine Embassy in Washington DC.
According to DFA, the repatriated Filipinos would undergo a mandatory 14-day quarantine, as part of health measures against the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), prior to returning to their hometowns. The batch of seafarers from the USA was the first of 5 repatriations scheduled on Friday that would bring back home 1000+ Filipino crew from the USA and Europe. Since February, DFA said it had assisted the repatriation of 10,000+ Filipinos.
For Coronavirus updates on cruise ship quarantines (infected passengers and crew) and top-pandemic countries (COVID-19 cases and deaths, daily updated statistics) see at CruiseMapper's Norovirus page.