Over 170 passengers and crew members became ill with an extremely contagious norovirus on a month-long cruise on the Crown Princess cruise liner.
The ship, part of Princess Cruises and thankfully a vessel for a non-singles cruise, docked in San Pedro, CA early Sunday morning.
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), norovirus is an infectious stomach flu that causes vomiting and diarrhea.
Out of the 3,009 passengers and 1,160 crew members aboard the ship, 158 passengers and 14 crewmembers took ill with the virus, according to the CDC.
Guests first began to show symptoms during the second week of the cruise and were quarantined to their rooms, where their meals were delivered to them.
As for the other passengers, they received daily updates from the captain on the status of the spreading illness. Passengers and crew were taking extra precautions to avoid the illness, including crew members distributing silverware, rather than allowing passengers to grab it for themselves.
Crew members were also constantly cleaning and disinfecting the different cruise vessel parts and equipment. From handrails to bathrooms to chairs and tables, crew members were constantly wiping down the different vessel parts with specialized parts and equipment.
“They were wiping down handrails and walls, bathrooms, tables, the chairs … everything you can think of they were continually wiping it down,” said passenger Laura Tagliere, on the cruise with her husband and three children.
Now that the ship has docked, it won’t be a cruise vessel for sale anytime in the near future. The Crown Princess will receive a deep-cleaning of all of its vessel parts before embarking on its next voyage.
This is not the first cruise ship epidemic of this kind, not even for this ship. In April, 129 people on the Crown Princess contracted norovirus during a seven-day cruise along the California coast.
Does this kind of thing make you nervous about cruise travel? Let us know in the comments!
