Kiwi quarantined on coronavirus cruise ship frustrated at Government evacuation proposal

A proposal to bring home Kiwis stuck on a coronavirus-quarantined cruise ship is too little, too late, according to one New Zealander trapped on board.

By Breanna Barraclough and Andrew Macfarlane

But even if the Government's proposal does go ahead, it may not mean the end to their quarantine ordeal, Jacinda Ardern admits.

Aucklander Wren Manuel is one of the 11 New Zealanders on board the Diamond Princess off Japan. Two others have been diagnosed with covid-19 and taken to hospital.

He's frustrated that it's taken so long for the Government to offer a hand.

"If they did want to rescue us, they could have done it from day one rather than wait for so many days to go past," he told 1 NEWS exclusively today, from on-board the ship.

Today's proposal would mean if Australia sends a flight to bring out its citizens , the New Zealanders would be allowed to come too.

Tonight Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a mercy flight will take place on Wednesday.

Tomorrow is supposed to be the day those on board are tested, one last time, for the virus. In three days, they could be free to go.

Last week, Kiwi couple James and Lulu pleaded for the Government to bring them home , but the possibility was rejected by the Prime Minister.

At the time, Ms Ardern said it wasn't feasible to break another country's quarantine rules - and even if they were brought home, they'd still have to be in quarantine anyway.

Today Ms Arden admitted even with the new proposal, they'll probably need to endure another quarantine before being allowed free.

"One of the issues that exists, of course, is that people were kept on the cruise ship for the purposes of quarantine, but there has continued to be the spread of coronavirus during that quarantine period," she told media today.

"There's a question mark there over whether or not it's been successful."

For Mr Manuel, that's not good enough. He says they've already done their time.

"At the moment we don't know where they're going to take us. Will there be another quarantine period for another 14 days? It doesn't make sense," he says.

"We don't know when we do go back to New Zealand, if there's going to be a quarantine period for us as well. We don't know what the New Zealand Government is going to do".

At such a late stage, Mr Manuel says he'd prefer to stick around in Japan for a while rather than go through another quarantine to go home.

"We've only got to stay another three or four days next, which I might as well see through, then hopefully we're negative and then we'll be all good, rather than flying back to wherever then spending another 14 days in quarantine."

Diamond Princess has offered to reimburse the passengers' cruises and pay for them to fly back to their own countries, Mr Manuel says.

He's also worried the evacuation flight could expose them to the virus they've been trying so desperately to prevent.

"To be honest, we don't know who we're going to be grouped with - we could pick up an infection there," he says.

Officials are currently working through a plan to figure out the best way of bringing the New Zealanders home, Ms Ardern says.

"I know that they'll be pleased we're looking into trying to get them back," she says.

"We're working through what that [quarantine] would look like, how we can support them, of course, given so many of them have been away from their families for so long, but we're looking into the details of that."

More than 350 cases of covid-19 have been confirmed on board the cruise ship over the past two weeks, with thousands of passengers and crew stuck in quarantine on board.

Earlier in the outbreak, the New Zealand Government chartered a flight to bring more than 100 people out of quarantined Wuhan , where the virus originated.

Australians on that flight were sent on to Christmas Island, while others have been quarantined at Whangaparāoa .