A cruise ship with 3,500 people aboard has been ordered to stay back from the California coast until passengers and crew can be tested for the coronavirus after a traveller from its previous voyage died of the disease and at least four others became infected.
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A military helicopter lowered test kits onto the 290-metre Grand Princess by rope as the vessel lay at anchor off the coast of San Francisco.
Video from the California National Guard showed the helicopter approaching the bow of the ship and lowering three paratroopers to an empty area with what appeared to be a freezer chest and other items.
"The ship will not come on shore until we appropriately assess the passengers," Governor Gavin Newsom said.
The precaution was prompted by the death of a man from coronavirus after he had been on an earlier sailing of the ship, in February. Two other passengers from that voyage have been hospitalised with the virus in Northern California, and two Canadians who recently sailed aboard the ship tested positive after returning home, officials said.
Princess Cruise Lines said that no cases of the virus had been confirmed among those still on the ship. But dozens of passengers have had flu-like symptoms over the past two weeks or so, said Mary Ellen Carroll, executive director of San Francisco's Department of Emergency Management.
Meanwhile, the US death toll from the coronavirus climbed to 12 on Thursday, with all but one of the victims in Washington state, and the number of infections swelled to over 200, scattered across 18 states.
Nine of the dead were from the same suburban Seattle nursing home, now under federal investigation.
Some major Seattle-area businesses, including Microsoft, Amazon and outdoor gear manufacturer REI, have shut down some operations or urged employees to work from home. The two tech giants together employ more than 100,000 people in the region.
Around the country, New York's mayor implored the federal government to send more test kits to his state, which saw its caseload double overnight to 22, all of them in or near the city.
In Rhode Island, about 200 people were quarantined because of their connections to a school trip to Italy that has so far resulted in three cases of the coronavirus.
On Wall Street, fears about the outbreak led to a sharp selloff, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 970 points, or 3.6 per cent. The drop extended two weeks of wild swings in the market, with stocks fluctuating 2 per cent or more for the fourth day in a row.
The ship was returning to San Francisco after visiting Hawaii. Some of the passengers remained on board after sailing on its previous voyage to the Mexican ports of Puerto Vallarta, Manzanillo, Mazatlan and Cabo San Lucas.
The coronavirus has infected nearly 98,000 people worldwide and killed over 3,300, the vast majority of them in China.
US health officials said they expect a far lower death rate than the World Health Organisation 's international estimate of 3.4 per cent.
Australian Associated Press
