Roughly 600 passengers left the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Yokohama, Japan, on Wednesday, as a controversial ship-wide coronavirus quarantine finally began to relax. All of those passengers had been tested for COVID-19 by the Japanese health ministry, according to cruise operator Princess Cruises. 

Thursday at around 8:30 a.m, the first group of 106 Hong Kong residents from the quarantined cruise ship landed at Hong Kong International Airport on chartered flights. On Monday, 340 U.S. passengers evacuated from Japan arrived in the United States on two chartered flights. 

The Canadian government will begin evacuating its citizens from the virus-hit cruise ship on Thursday evening, Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said on Wednesday.

"The aircraft the government has chartered is currently in Tokyo. We will begin pre-flight screening and disembarkation tomorrow evening local time," Champagne told reporters in Ottawa.

People with symptoms of the coronavirus will not be allowed to leave, and those who have tested positive will be treated in Japan, he added. There are 251 Canadians on board the Diamond Princess and 47 have tested positive.

On arrival in Canada the evacuees will be transported to an aviation training base in Ontario for a 14-day quarantine period.

Canada has already evacuated almost 400 people from the coronavirus-stricken Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of epidemic.

The Diamond Princess, which originally carried about 3,700 passengers and crew, has been in quarantine since early February.

On Wednesday, even as some passengers rolled their luggage off the ship, Japanese authorities announced 79 new cases had been discovered on board, bringing the total above 620, well over half of the known cases outside mainland China.

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Another cruise ship called the MS Westerdam was stranded at sea for two weeks after five ports turned it away for fear of infections on board, until Cambodia granted it permission to dock on February 13. 

After an initial testing of 20 samples suggested there was no evidence of COVID-19 on board, passengers started disembarking the next day.

Wednesday, the country's health ministry announced that nearly 800 passengers from the Westerdam cruise ship remaining in Cambodia have tested negative for the coronavirus.

Spokeswoman Or Vandine said the ministry was waiting on additional lab results for other passengers, but did not say how many tests were pending.

The 781 passengers, some on the ship and others staying in a Phnom Penh hotel in Cambodia, who tested negative for COVID-19 did not have "health-related problems at all," she said.

(With input from agencies)