UPDATED: Camp Roberts will not do double duty as coronavirus quarantine for cruise ship passengers—for now.

UPDATED (Feb. 18): For a brief moment, Monterey County officials were preparing to play a role in the developing coronavirus story. That moment, at least for the time being, has passed. A decision to possibly use Camp Roberts in South County has been reversed, according to Karen Smith, spokesperson for the Monterey County Health Department.

A press release posted to the Health Department's website on Feb. 17 states that the department received a notice "that federal authorities no longer consider Camp Roberts a potential site to house any returning travelers who may or may not be infected with novel coronavirus (COVID-19)."

“We remain prepared to work with federal and state partners should future decisions turn back to Camp Roberts as a resource," Health Officer Edward Moreno said in the statement.

PREVIOUS STORY (Feb. 16): There are no cases of coronavirus in Monterey County at this time, but a military base in a remote corner of South County may be pressed into service as a place of quarantine for infected American passengers of a cruise ship currently docked in Japan, according to the Monterey County Health Department.

It’s not certain that patients from the Diamond Princess cruise ship who test positive for COVID-19 will be taken to Camp Roberts, a National Guard post that shares a border with San Luis Obispo County, a statement released on Feb. 16 said, but officials are preparing for the possibility.

An NPR news report earlier in the day stated there are 44 U.S. passengers aboard the ship who test positive for the virus. (A status report by the World Health Organization shows 355 total infected passengers. It does not provide a breakdown of the nationalities of those who tested positive.)

The county’s press release indicated that the base could be used for those patients from the ship who still test positive but no longer require hospitalization for the remainder of their isolation period.

Monterey County officials are working with their counterparts in San Luis Obispo County as well as state and federal agencies to coordinate efforts should the base be needed to house patients.

“We understand that a federal team will provide the staffing, food, and medical care at Camp Roberts,” said Edward Moreno, Monterey County health officer, in the release. “The Monterey County Health Department is working to ensure that we protect the health and well-being of Monterey County residents.”

The risk to county residents for exposure to the coronavirus remains low. There are 15 confirmed cases in the U.S., eight of them in California, according to the California Department of Public Health.

Two of those cases were a husband and wife in San Benito County. The husband had recently returned from a trip to Wuhan, the province in China where the virus began. The two were taken to the UC San Francisco medical center. A spokesperson stated that no updates about their conditions will be made available to the public.