Spirit of Discovery turned away at Gibraltar

Are cruise ships giant incubators for spreading viruses and other microorganisms?  While the coronavirus has dominated the news recently, two cruise ships were turned away from ports after passengers and crew were stricken by the common norovirus.

We have been following the spread of the coronavirus, now officially named COVID-19, on the cruise ship Diamond Princess.  Currently, 218 people are confirmed infected on the ship, out of the 713 people tested. There are a total of approximately 3,500 people on board, so only about 20% of the passengers and crew have been tested.

The passengers and crew are being held under a two-week quarantine intended to prevent the virus from spreading ashore. There are now concerns, however, that the quarantine is allowing the virus to spread unchecked aboard the ship itself.

With all the attention given to attempting to prevent a COVID-19, there are even larger numbers of cruise ship passengers being struck down by a debilitating virus. Earlier this week, a British cruise ship, Saga’s Spirit of Discovery, was returning from a trip around Italy and Spain Saturday when it was turned away at Gibraltar due to an outbreak of norovirus aboard the ship. Reports suggest anywhere between 55 and 89 passengers and crew were struck down by the virus. 

Meanwhile, the cruise ship Caribbean Princess was on a 14-day Caribbean voyage that departed on Feb. 2, when it was turned away by the Trinidad and Tobago after 300 or so passengers and crew were infected by the norovirus.  The ship has now turned around and is heading back to Port Canaveral. 

Norovirus is a gastrointestinal illness that causes fever, diarrhea, vomiting, and stomach pain. Those infected with the virus typically develop symptoms within 12 to 48 hours and recover within one to three days.  The virus is highly contagious and occurs primarily in the winter months. Worldwide there are 685 million cases of norovirus and 200,000 deaths a year. There is no vaccine.

While COVID-19 is a far deadlier virus than the norovirus, in most cases its symptoms are less severe. The Washington Post reports that so far, about 82 percent of the cases have been mild, with symptoms that require little or no medical intervention.

Unfortunately, norovirus outbreaks are fairly common on cruise ships. In January 2019, a norovirus infected close to 600 passengers and crew aboard Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas on a cruise from Florida. In 2014, Royal Caribbean’s Explorer of the Seas set a record for norovirus cases when almost 700 passengers and crew became ill, representing roughly 20% of the people on board the ship.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) considers any outbreak over 2% of the those aboard a cruise ship to be serious enough to require a special notification. The CDC posts details on its website of any outbreak representing over 3% of the passengers and crew.