Santa Clarita Couple Quarantined After Being Evacuated From Cruise Ship, Man Tests Positive For Coronavirus
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — A Santa Clarita couple has been placed in isolation in the United States after being evacuated off of a quarantined cruise ship off the coast of Japan over concerns that they might have contracted the novel coronavirus.
The couple, Carl and Jeri Seratti Goldman, were on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, and said they were excited to be coming back to the United States together.
The Goldmans were on one of two evacuation flights out of China — the first arrived Sunday at Travis Air Force Base in Northern California and the other on Monday in Texas. Fourteen of the passengers, including Carl and Jeri, had previously tested positive for coronavirus. Those passengers were then flown to Nebraska for possible treatment and a second round of tests to confirm the diagnosis.
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On Tuesday, those test results came back, positive for Carl and negative for Jeri.
"Good news and bad news," Jeri said in a video posted to Facebook. "Bad news is Carl tested positive, which we figured was going to happen. Good news is he's already broken his fever."
The couple remains at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in isolated rooms — Jeri in a sparsely decorated dormitory-like room and Carl in the hospital receiving treatment. The couple communicates via FaceTime.
"This is my room, it's like a dormitory," Jeri said in a video posted to Facebook. "I'm not able to leave this room at all. This is it for 14 days, no going outside, no nothing."
Inside the sparse room was a bed, dresser, treadmill, bathroom with shower and a television.
On Tuesday morning, Jeri logged on again to address the backlash she's received from sharing her ordeal on social media.
"Woke up on Facebook to lots of hate from people saying not to come home again and also that we lied and that we knew we had the virus when we got on the plane, which is totally not true," she said. "When we got tested on the ship, we never heard back, so we made up the story in our own heads that no news was good news.
"I guess there's quite a show going on on Twitter that I'm a liar. I'm not a liar."
Despite the backlash, Jeri said her husband remained in good spirits in his isolation unit.
