UPDATE: The passenger onboard the ship was found to not have the coronavirus. It is not clear when the passengers will disembark the ship.
About 6,000 people are stuck in quarantine off the coast of Rome after a woman began to show symptoms of the coronavirus.
The Costa Smeralda is being held about 35 miles north of Rome as officials evaluate a 54-year-old woman and her husband after she came down with a fever. The two are from Macao, a region on the southern coast of China.
People onboard the vessel will not be allowed to get off until test results come back from the couple, who have been placed in isolation inside the ship. The Costa Smeralda was traveling from Spain to Italy on a weeklong Mediterranean cruise.
Fears have been growing globally about the virus, which originated in Wuhan, China, and has spread to multiple other countries. There are 7,783 confirmed cases of the virus in 16 countries as of Thursday morning. A total of 170 people have died from the outbreak.
Doctors in Germany, Japan, and Vietnam said that the virus has been spreading to patients who have never traveled to China, indicating person-to-person transmission outside of the Chinese mainland.
The World Health Organization Emergency Committee is meeting Thursday to decide whether the outbreak constitutes a global health emergency.
