Tag Archives: Cruise

Blame the consumer, cruise edition

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‘The simple fact is that if people washed their hands, there would be no norovirus,’ that’s what Royal Caribbean CEO Michael Bayley said in an  interview in Business Insider published this week.

Nope. It’s not that simple. Handwashing is a factor, but so is showing up ill, so is how surfaces are cleaned and sanitized (and with what compound). Norovirus isn’t just a handwashing or cruise patron problem. And if it was, and  was so simple we wouldn’t see 20 million + illness annually in the U.S.

The article has another gem, 

But personal hygiene isn’t always enough, according to Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. In addition to physical contact, the illness can also spread from an infected person’s respiratory system, which means that simply breathing the same air as an infected person can leave you vulnerable.

Huh? The virus can be aerosolized and then deposited on surfaces dozens of feet away from a vomit event – but it’s not a respiratory illness.

Carnival cruises: Couple’s honeymoon ruined by poop shower

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My parents are taking a well-earned respite from the cold of Canada and embarked on a cruise from Florida the other day.

Hopefully it’s better than the one described below.

A couple from Missouri says their honeymoon cruise was ruined by sewage spewing from a shower drain, leaving them to celebrate amid the smell of “poop” inside their cabin.

Christine Parker and John Shoemaker, of St. Louis, detailed their foul experience in November aboard the Carnival Triumph in an interview with the Miami Herald, claiming unsanitary conditions on the 14-deck, 893-foot mega-ship turned what should have been a celebration into a potential health scare.

“We didn’t have a good honeymoon,” Parker told the newspaper. “People expect you to come back so excited and we have been fighting with the Carnival staff and smelling poop in our room. We were exhausted and angry.”

To make matters even worse, Parker claimed crew members aboard the ship acted as if black sewage reeking of fecal matter was no big deal.

For her troubles, Parker said Carnival offered her a $300 credit to be used on the ship and 15 percent off her next cruise with the company — which she doesn’t intend to book anytime soon.

The ship, which arrived back in south Florida on Nov. 11, was later given a failing grade by inspectors from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vessel Sanitation Program.

Two other Carnival Cruise Line ships — the Breeze and the Vista, the company’s newest vessel — failed similar inspections in December, bringing the company’s tally to three failed inspections within two months, according to the Herald.

A Miami-based maritime attorney told the newspaper that failed inspections on cruise ships typically occur roughly two or three times per year, making the rash of poor grades a rarity.

Chabeli Herrera of the Miami Herald reports that aboard the Carnival Vista, Carnival Cruise Line’s newest ship, crew members hid trolleys of potentially hazardous food, equipment and dirty dishware from sanitation inspectors.

Fruit flies were found by the buffet and in a Parmesan cheese container. Crew failed to appropriately document illnesses on board.

On the Carnival Breeze, another of the Doral-based line’s newest vessels, machinery was found to be corroded or not functioning properly. About 25 garbage bins overflowing with waste were found by inspectors near an area where food was handled.

These violations and dozens of others landed both ships failing grades from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vessel Sanitation Program, which routinely inspects cruise ships in an effort to control the spread of gastrointestinal illnesses. Ships must score 86 points or higher, out of 100, to pass.

But December’s reports follow another Carnival failure reported in November aboard the Carnival Triumph, bringing Carnival’s tally to three failed inspections in the past two months.

200 hit by noro on Sea Princess cruise ship docking in Brisbane

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Jorge Branco of the Brisbane Times reports gastro has hit about 200 passengers on board a cruise ship docking in Brisbane on Thursday morning.

The Sea Princess was returning from a two-week trip to New Zealand, which saw as much as seven per cent of those on board struck down with norovirus.

Efforts were made to contain the outbreak, with further cleaning expected once passengers departed the 260-metre cruise ship at Hamilton’s Portside Wharf.

A Princess Cruises spokesman said the cleaning measures would delay the ship’s departure with a fresh crew of passengers on the same route later on Thursday.

The cruise saw an “elevated number” of guests suffering norovirus-induced gastro, he said.

Cruising with noro and C. perfringens

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More than 300 passengers on a cruise ship that docked at Port Everglades, Florida, fell ill with a stomach virus.

The Naples Daily News reports that the Royal Caribbean Cruises Limited’s ship Independence Of The Seas docked Saturday in Florida reported 332 cases of gastro-intestinal illness among the 5,547 guests.

It was the second time in less than a month that illness hit passengers on one of the cruise line’s vessels.

The 5-night cruise was interrupted for those passengers, who had symptoms including vomiting and diarrhea. One passenger, Victoria Nolan, described people throwing up in elevators.

Tracy Flores, a passenger, said her teen son, who is diabetic contracted the illness while on board.

“We brought him Wednesday night we wheeled him in, they already had a full waiting room and as we were sitting there, more wheelchairs were coming in, more wheelchairs were coming,” Flores told WPLG-TV. “Everybody was puking, everywhere they were leaving to go use the bathroom with diarrhea and it was just frightening.”

This follows an outbreak involving 100s of passengers aboard Royal Caribbean’s Ovation of the Seas cruise ship that were stricken with Norovirus on a recent cruise from Singapore to Hobart, Tasmania in Australia. The Ovation of the Seas has a capacity of 5,000 passengers and 1500 in crew members – making it the world’s fourth largest cruise ship and the largest cruise ship to ever sail in Australian waters.

And in something completely different – except for the cruise ship commonality — Outbreak News Today reports that Clostridium perfringens was the cause of an outbreak that sickened over 200 in Nov. 2017 aboard the Princess Cruises vessel Crown Princess.

Blaming consumers: Cruise ship edition

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Jim Walker of Cruise Law News writes the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that there was a gastrointestinal outbreak on the Crown Princess during its recent cruise, from October 25th to November 8, 2017. The Princess cruise ship departed Quebec, Canada on October 25th for a two-week cruise to Canadian and U.S. ports. The cruise ship arrived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on November 8th and will begin its Caribbean season.

According to the CDC report, 184 passengers and 12 crew members became ill with gastro-like symptoms which included diarrhea.  

During the period from 2010 to the current date, Princess Cruises experienced the most outbreaks on its cruise ships calling on U.S. ports, according to the CDC. Princess reported twenty-one (21) cases to the CDC during this time period.

The Crown Princess alone has suffered through six (6) norovirus outbreaks since 2010 to the present. Before the current GI outbreak, the last norovirus outbreak on the Crown Princess was from January 3 – 18, 2016 and, before that, from October 18 to November 16, 2014. Earlier, there was a norovirus and e-coli outbreak from February 5 to 12, 2014. It also experienced back-to-back norovirus outbreaks from January 29 to February 4, 2012 and February 4 to February 9, 2012.

The cruise line with the second most outbreaks is Holland America Line with 18 cases of GI sicknesses reported to the CDC since 2010. HAL suffered norovirus outbreaks on the Nieuw Amsterdam, and two outbreaks each on the Voendam and the Noordam this year.  

So why is Princess Cruises far more prone to norovirus outbreaks than Carnival cruise lines, for example?

The cruise industry always blames the passengers for bringing the virus aboard, rather than its food handlers, or contaminated food or water. So are Princess Cruises customers the sickest and the least hygienic cruisers around? Are guests of HAL the second most unhygienic cruisers? Do they wash their hands the least of any cruisers? This seems like absurd arguments to make.

Whoever is to blame, the crew members, of course, always pay the price, by having to wipe and scrub and spray everything in sight for long 16+ hour days to try to disinfect a ship longer than three football fields.

Irrespective of the blame-game, don’t call us if you get sick on a cruise. Proving where the virus came from, or that the cruise line was negligent, is virtually impossible to prove, especially since the CDC conducts no epidemiological analysis and sometimes can’t even figure out whether the outbreak is due to norovirus, e-coli or something as exotic as Shigella sonnei or Cyclospora cayetanensis.

For example, The New Zealand Herald reports, a passenger on a cruise ship plagued with a vomiting and diarrhoea bug says he only learnt previous guests had been struck down with the same thing once they set sail.

Sydney man Walter Gibian and his wife Elisabeth left Sydney on October 30 on a 12-day Celebrity Solstice cruise travelling from Sydney to Auckland via the South Island so they could see New Zealand. Gibian had worked in New Zealand in 1980s and loved it so booked the cruise to see the East Coast.

The ship had left Melbourne when the captain announced to guests that passengers on an earlier cruise had norovirus and asked guests to take extra precautions including washing their hands regularly and using hand sanitiser.

any notification before they left and by this time it was too late to do anything about it as they were well on their way to New Zealand.

“It think people should be told and given the option that if you don’t like being exposed to this virus you are allowed to get off. But we found out when we were sea.”

Halfway into the 12-day cruise passengers started falling ill and Elisabeth came down with the bug on Saturday night. She was then isolated to her cabin for 48 hours.

“They (passengers) are sick all right. But of course the ship won’t tell us how many are sick, but my wife got sick on Saturday night. They are taking all sorts of precautions but it is still happening. They keep telling me, they are doing their utmost and they are doing their best but the fact is it is not effective.”

252 sick: Noro cruise docks in Maine

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Federal health officials say the first cruise ship to dock in Portland, Maine, this season is under surveillance for norovirus.

chapman.vomitThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 27 percent of the passengers aboard the Balmoral — operated by the Fred Olsen Cruises — have gotten sick since the cruise began April 16.

The ship and all aboard have since left Portland, according to police Lieutenant Robert Doherty.

The CDC reports that 252 of the 919 passengers on the Balmoral have fallen ill, as well as eight crew members.

Fred Olsen Cruises did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

So far this year, there have been 10 outbreaks of norovirus on cruise ships, according to the CDC.

Things go bad when Americans try biz in Cuba: Norovirus edition

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The first cruise ship to Cuba in decades set sail on its historic voyage a week ago – but it has returned to Florida with a suspected norovirus outbreak on board.

the-godfather-part-iiCarnival Corporation’s Fathom Line ship Adonia left Miami for Havana with just over 700 passengers on board on May 1. 

The ship returned to Miami a week later – around 6.30am on Sunday – but on its journey back to the United States, there were reports that several passengers had fallen ill, CBS News reports.  

Carnival confirmed to the station that 14 passengers were recovering from stomach-related symptoms. 

It is believed that the passengers in question had norovirus, CBS reports, but the cruise line has not elaborated. 

12 sickened: Australian grandmother almost died after contracting Salmonella on cruise

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A Perth grandmother has been struck down by a number of illnesses after she was infected with Salmonella while a passenger on an Australian cruise ship.

Sally Faulkin, 90, has spent one month in hospital after she, along with 12 others, came down with Salmonella poisoning on a Cruise and Maritime Voyages ship last month.

Ms Faulkin became so sick she could no longer walk, and her family called a priest, fearing she would need to have her last rites read.

Ms Faulkin’s family said they had made five phone calls and sent nine emails to the cruise company in an attempt to get answers, but haven’t received a response.

Michael Gannon, a spokesman for the Australian Medical Association WA, said cruise ships are a breeding ground for bacteria.

“It’s a completely closed environment where infectious agents can spread very quickly,” he said.

The Australian Medical Association WA is making calls for a quarantine and inspection service to check ships coming in and out of the state, which would bring them in line with NSW.

Cruising and noro

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I’ve never been on a cruise. Sometimes we talk about taking one, hopping from island to island and relaxing on the open seas.

And then comes another round of norovirus outbreaks. Lots of news coverage, throwbacks to the poop cruises and pictures of the CDC Vessel Sanitation program officials boarding ships.

Restaurants are linked to 64 per cent of norovirus outbreaks. CDC says that cruise ships get a lot of the attention but only account for only about 1 per cent of norovirus outbreaks.

But not everyone goes on a cruise.

In 2013, according to the Florida-Carribean Cruise Association 11.7 million North Americans (out of a total of ~530 million residents) went on cruises.

In this week’s MMWR, the good folks at the CDC released an analysis of cruise-related noro. MSMajestyOfTheSeasEdit1

From 2008 to 2014, the rate of acute gastroenteritis on cruise ships decreased among passengers from 27.2 cases per 100,000 travel days in 2008 to 22.3 in 2014, while the rate among crew members was essentially unchanged. The rate among both passengers and crew members was higher in 2012 compared with the preceding and following years, likely because of the emergence of a new norovirus strain. Among 73,599,005 passengers on cruise ships during 2008–2014, a total of 129,678 (0.18%) cases of acute gastroenteritis were reported during outbreak and nonoutbreak voyages; among 28,281,361 crew members, 43,132 (0.15%) cases were reported. Only a small proportion of those cases were part of a norovirus outbreak.

Cases of acute gastroenteritis illness on cruise ships are relatively infrequent. Norovirus, the most common causative agent of outbreaks, accounted for 14,911 cases among passengers and crew members during 2008–2014, 0.01% of the estimated number of norovirus cases in the United States during the study period. To further reduce acute gastroenteritis on cruise ships, travelers should practice good hand hygiene, especially after using the toilet and before touching the face or eating; persons experiencing diarrhea or vomiting should promptly report their illness for proper assessment, treatment, and monitoring.

Suspected norovirus outbreak hits Holland America Line’s Veendam

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Holland America Line’s Veendam was hit with a possible norovirus outbreak on its December 20-27 cruise, ending in San Diego on Sunday. Fifty-seven of 1,429 passengers or almost 4 percent of passengers were reported ill with vomiting and diarrhea as the primary symptoms, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which investigates illnesses on cruise ships.

BarfingBarbie.vomitjpgTen of 588 crew members, or 1.7 percent of the crew, also were ill during the cruise. While the CDC lists the causative agent as “unknown,” the reported symptoms mimic that of norovirus, which occurs on both land and sea in places where large numbers of people gather.

In response to the outbreak, the CDC said that Holland America Line and the crew undertook the following action:

Increased the onboard cleaning and disinfection procedures according to their outbreak prevention and response plan;

Collected stool specimens from passenger and crew gastrointestinal illness cases for testing;

Made twice daily reports of gastrointestinal illness cases to the Vessel Sanitation Program (VSP);

Consulted with the CDC on plans for their comprehensive sanitation procedures planned for the voyage disembarkation day in San Diego.

During that disembarkation, Holland America set up a planned staged disembarkation for active cases to limit the opportunity of illness transmission to other, non-infected guests and also sanitized the terminal, to protect those well passengers who were disembarking and others boarding the ship for the next cruise.