Hundreds of passengers began leaving the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan on Wednesday after the end of a much-criticised two-week quarantine that failed to stop the spread the coronavirus among passengers and crew.

Results were still pending for some passengers who had been tested for the coronavirus that has infected tens of thousands of people in China and more than 540 on the ship.

Some passengers said on Twitter they received health check forms asking if they had symptoms such as a headache, fever or coughing.

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One of passengers, left, from the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship is guided after walking out from the ship (Eugene Hoshiko/AP)

Passengers who tested negative and had no symptoms still had to have their body temperature checked before leaving.

Japanese soldiers helped escort some passengers, including an elderly man in a wheelchair who wore a face mask and held a cane.

Some passengers apparently called taxis to get home. Others boarded buses to be transported to train stations.

Some people still in their ship cabins waved farewell from their balconies to those who’d already disembarked.

“I’m a bit concerned if I’m okay to get off the ship, but it was getting very difficult physically,” a 77-year-old man from Saitama, near Tokyo, who got off with his wife, told Kyodo News.

“For now, we just want to celebrate.”

About 500 passengers were expected to leave on Wednesday.

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An unidentified passenger on a wheelchair is escorted from the ship (Jae C. Hong/AP)

Japanese officials will spend several days evacuating some 2,000 others who were kept aboard the ship at the Yokohama port near Tokyo after one passenger who departed the Diamond Princess earlier in Hong Kong was found to have the virus.

The ship, which some experts have called a perfect virus incubator, has become the site of the most infections outside of China, where the illness named Covid-19 emerged late last year.

As of Tuesday, 542 cases have been identified among the original 3,711 people on the ship.

Even though Japanese officials insist the number of infected patients is levelling off, dozens of new cases on the ship continue to mount daily.

On Tuesday, 88 people tested positive; a day earlier 99 others were found to have been infected.

Japan Outbreak
An unidentified passenger is surrounded by the media after she disembarked from the quarantined Diamond Princess (Jae C. Hong/AP)

Crew members, who couldn’t be confined to their rooms over the last two weeks because they were working, are expected to stay on the ship.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga defended Japan’s handling of the quarantine.

“In the beginning, the United States expressed gratitude for the Japanese side. And there are many Americans who chose to stay on the ship,” Suga said.

Japanese health officials said the 14-day quarantine on the ship was adequate, noting all but one of more than 500 Japanese returnees from the epicentre of the virus in China who initially tested negative were found to be virus-free at the end of their 14-day quarantine.

Those officials also defended precautions taken on the ship.

Some 1,000 crew members were told to wear surgical masks, wash their hands, use disinfectant sprays and stop operations at restaurants, bars and other entertainment areas after February 5, when the first group of 10 infections was reported and the start of the 14-day quarantine announced.

Passengers were instructed to stay in their cabins and not walk around or contact other passengers. Those in windowless cabins could go out on the deck for about an hour each day.

The quarantine was largely for passengers, since crew members kept sharing double rooms and continued to serve guests by delivering food, letters, towels and amenities, and entering passenger cabins for cleaning.