People laid flowers Monday at Yokohama Port in Kanagawa Prefecture to pray for those who died after contracting COVID-19 on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which arrived at the port five years ago.
"We will not let the deaths of 14 people go to waste," said Yasuhito Hirasawa, 69, co-head of a group formed by those who were on the ship at that time.
"We hope that isolation on board will never happen again," he said, calling for building a system that allows passengers to disembark for treatment and quarantine in the event of an infectious disease outbreak on a ship.
The group has claimed that the government's examination of the cluster infections was inadequate, seeking a reinvestigation in order to prevent the tragedy happening again.
The cluster infections on the ship broke out in February 2020. Of a total of 3,711 passengers and crew members, 712 became infected with the novel coronavirus and 14 died from the disease, including a person who died after returning home on a chartered plane.
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