A bus carrying passengers leave the port after passengers disembarked from the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2020, in Yokohama, near Tokyo. Passengers tested negative for COVID-19 started disembarking Wednesday.

Jae C. Hong / AP Photo

Chef José Andrés is quite possibly better known for his humanitarian relief efforts than for his award-winning restaurants. World Central Kitchen, the nonprofit he founded a decade ago, has been ubiquitous during natural disasters like hurricanes and manmade times of hardship, like last year’s partial federal shutdown. Now, World Central Kitchen is assisting some of the people dealing with the coronavirus outbreak by setting up an off-site kitchen to support the passengers and crew of Diamond Princess, a Japanese cruise ship that has been under quarantine amid a major outbreak on board.

The help began with lunch on Tuesday, according to a statement from Princess Cruises, which noted that “we will be integrating WCK meals into our food service options. Meals will continue to include breakfast, lunch and dinner, which will be delivered to staterooms accommodating all dietary requirements.”

The World Central Kitchen is set up at the Yokohama port, preparing and packaging food off-site and then delivering the meals to the ship. As director of field operations Sam Bloch explained in a video posted to Twitter, the idea is that “the crew doesn’t have to cook and do all of the work. They get to get some rest.” According to CNN, the approximately 1,045 crew members were not quarantined unless they were sick and were instead tasked with serving the 2,666 passengers on board during the two-week quarantine.

Diamond Princess departed from Yokohama on January 20 and was slated to return on February 4. On the first of the month, the cruise company confirmed that a passenger who disembarked in Hong Kong on January 25 later tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. On the return date, 10 people onboard tested positive and Japan decided to institute a 14-day quarantine. As the number of cases on the ship continued to rise, some experts—including the Centers for Disease Control—criticized the way Japanese authorities handled the quarantine. Currently, the cruise ship has the most COVID-19 infections outside of China, the country where the disease originated—as of today, there were at least 621 confirmed cases on board.

The two-week quarantine has officially ended, and hundreds of passengers who have tested negative for the virus began to disembark in what is expected to be a three-day operation, according to the New York Times. Already, many of the people infected have been transported to nearby hospitals and about 300 passengers from the United States were taken off board earlier this week (14 of them have tested positive for the disease). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Tuesday that all passengers and crew of Diamond Princess are prevented from returned to the U.S. for at least 14 days after disembarking.

Bloch said in a video that the effort in Japan is “definitely a different situation for us. But then again, every disaster, every immigration crisis, every situation we address is a unique and different situation.” World Central Kitchen’s disaster relief efforts have been lauded for years. In 2017, the nonprofit provided more meals to people living without power in Puerto Rico than any other government agency or nonprofit, part of what led to Andres’ nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018.

Here’s a look at what last night’s dinner looked like:

Princess Cruises announced today that “because of the extraordinary circumstances onboard Diamond Princess,” the company will refund the full cruise fare for passengers, as well as give them a future cruise credit.

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