Honeymoon horror: Long Island couple back on US soil after stuck on cruise with coronavirus patients
BLUE POINT, Long Island (WABC) -- Newlyweds from Long Island who were stuck on a cruise ship with coronavirus patients for weeks have finally arrived back on U.S. soil -- but they are going into isolation once again.
The couple is among the hundreds of Americans who were in quarantine aboard a cruise ship in Japan.
On Monday, all of them -- whether they are sick or not -- were flown on planes to American military bases.
The more than a dozen Americans who do have coronavirus will be treated, and the rest will go into quarantine again.
Eyewitness News spoke exclusively with the family of the couple who are still waiting to go home from their honeymoon.
"It's a waiting game, it was a waiting game before, but now at least he's here and we'll wait again," said the passenger's mother Tracy Cerullo.
Cerullo is breathing easier now. Her son Guy, and Guy's wife, Milena, were among 338 Americans who arrived at U.S. air bases on Monday morning.
They were evacuated from the Diamond Princess, where they were under quarantine since February 5.
"You know when your child is hurt you want to help them, when your child is stuck somewhere, you want to go pick him up, and not being able to do that has been tortuous," Cerullo said.
The coronavirus infected at least 450 passengers onboard the ship and the offer was made to evacuate passengers over the weekend.
Now the Americans will face another two weeks in quarantine at bases in California and Texas.
"I've just missed them so much. It's just, I've never been away from my daughter this long," mother Josephine Basso said.
Basso says it's especially painful, because the couple was on their honeymoon -- a 29-day dream cruise to places like Singapore and South Korea.
"I can't even imagine, 14 days stuck on there, plus the 29 days before that," Basso said.
And now 14 more. For the mothers-in-law, it's an unimaginable ordeal.
"It was like being in jail," Cerullo said.
The good news is, if their new marriage can survive this, their family says it can survive anything.
"Because picture being confined in one room with your wife or your husband for 30 days, already, on a cruise," she said. "And then being confined, not being able to leave the room. I don't know if I could do that. And I've been with my husband for 35 years."
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