SAN DIEGO -- The majority of high school students from Carlsbad who took a school-sponsored trip to China are expected back in the country on Saturday after spending most of their trip quarantined in a hotel in the city of Yichang, a school offical told 10News.

Caroline Callaway, a spokeswoman for the school, said the group will travel to Shanghai and leave China Saturday, except for one teacher who will stay to support the sick students. It was not immediately clear when they would arrive in California.

The 36 ninth-graders from Pacific Ridge School and seven adult chaperones were supposed to return this past Monday but after six students and one teacher contracted the H1N1 swine flu virus all of the students were quarantined in a hotel.

At the hotel where the group was quarantined, each student was held in a different room with a television and phone. The hotel made food runs for the students, who were not allowed to have personal contact with anyone.

10News reporter Carole Sullivan reported that the quarantine order was lifted overnight but the six students and teacher who tested positive for swine flu remain in a hospital, Callaway said.

School officials said the large majority of those on the trip are expected back sometime this weekend but the students and teacher who tested positive for the swine flu won't be released from the hospital for another three to five days, Sullivan reported. After they are discharged they will be allowed to return.

The group left for China on June 2. Before the quarantine, they climbed the Great Wall, explored the immense plazas of the Forbidden City and visited the Terra Cotta Warriors in the inland city of Xi'an.

The group had embarked on a river cruise to Three Gorges Dam when a handful of students and one teacher started feeling sick and saw a doctor onboard.

Under the Chinese government's protocol, the students and teacher were taken to a nearby hospital when the boat docked.

Callaway said she didn't know where the students contracted the virus. They didn't have flu-like symptoms before the trip, she said.

After the river cruise, the group was scheduled to head to Shanghai and stay with local families before returning to California.

Callaway said the group might hold an event on campus once they're home to mark the end of the school year, which ended Tuesday.

The trip was tied to the ninth graders' study of ancient history and water resources.

Pacific Ridge opened in 2007 as a college prep school beginning with the seventh grade.

Previous Coverage:

7 From Carlsbad School Group Contract Swine Flu In China