Over 200 passengers of a cruise ship became ill with Norovirus suffering from episodes of vomiting and diarrhea during the four-week trip.
Photo: AFP
The Center for US Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), is the institution that reported this incident on March 18, after 224 passengers (8.8% of the total of 2,538) embarked on the Queen Mary 2 cruise ship, said they got sick during the trip, writes The Independent.
Also, 17 crew members totaling 1,232 people reported symptoms.
The CDC transmitted that Cunard, together with the crew, intensified the cleaning and disinfection procedures, collected chair samples from the cases of gastrointestinal diseases and consulted the VSP (Public Health) on cleaning procedures and reporting cases.
“We continue to monitor passengers and, from caution, we have completed a thorough cleaning of the ship and immediately activated our improved health and safety protocols, which prove to be effective.
Thanks to the prompt response of our crew and the additional measures taken on the spot, we expect a reduction of registered cases“, Cunard said.
The passengers and crew members who got sick were isolated by the rest of the people, the company reports. Until then, VSP monitors the situation from a distance.
The vessel is about to arrive on April 6 in Southampton, the United Kingdom, after leaving this port on March 8, on a journey around the East Caribbean. There were also some stops during the journey in destinations such as New York, Saint Lucia, Barbados, Dominica and Saint Kitts.
Cruise vessels are obliged to report cases of gastrointestinal diseases to VSP, as long as they are under its jurisdiction and more than three percent of passengers or crew are getting sick.
Norovirus, or the “disease of vomiting”, “is a diarrheic disease Very contagious, which manifests through diarrhea and vomiting, but these symptoms are very aggressive. The good news is that the disease is remitted spontaneously, it is self -limited, but most of the times, the affected person is scared and addressed to the doctor ”, explained for “Adevărul” Dr. Mihai Negrea.
