New York City officials told Friday that over two dozen people on board a Norwegian cruise ship had been screened for the new coronavirus, and four had been admitted to the hospital.
Personnel from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) boarded the ship to test at least 27 passengers “who recently came from mainland China,” Phil Murphy, the New Jersey Governor, said Friday.
“After being tested by CDC, 23 of those travellers were cleared, and four are being sent to a nearby hospital for further evaluation,” Murphy said.
The ship, Royal Caribbean’s Anthem of the Seas, is docked in Bayonne, New Jersey, about 15 miles from New York City.
The CDC said the hospitalized passengers belong to the same family that was recently in mainland China but not in the Hubei Province. It added that two of them were sick when personnel boarded the ship. As footage of the scene shows, the remaining two were taken out on stretchers.
According to Royal Caribbean, the passengers had not been in China since January 26, which probably put them past the 14-day incubation period.
The Norway-based cruise company highlighted in its statement that two passengers had already tested positive for influenza A.
“We value the CDC’s profusion of caution and their partnership. None of the four guests reflected any clinical symptoms of coronavirus while they were on board our ship,” the company said.
The Norwegian cruise company announced that from now on, “Any guests with a Chinese, Hong Kong, or Macau passport, regardless of when they were there last, will not be accepted to board our ships.”
All the Royal Caribbean cruises will follow that policy; the company said, “until further notice.”
Royal Caribbean’s Anthem of the Seas, the Quantum-class cruise ship, left Bayonne on January 27, as per its program, and sailed through the Caribbean and Puerto Rico before moving back to Bayonne on Friday morning.
The CDC has cleared the ship for travel. However, the company said it would wait until tomorrow to receive test reports for the suspected patients.
“We have been cleared by the authorities to depart on our next cruise as usual. However, for the sake of our concerned guests, we’ll delay our departure until the next morning, when we expect to collect the final test results from the CDC.
When accessed by media reporters, Royal Caribbean refused to share how many people were on board the ship.
As of Friday, over 31,000 cases of the news coronavirus have been confirmed in more than two dozen countries across the globe, resulting in 636 deaths, mainly in China.
Shares of Royal Caribbean were down at least 4% at the close after the CDC checked them for a new coronavirus on Friday.
The Anthem of the Seas isn’t the first ship that was stopped and checked for the new coronavirus, as several other ships have also been caught in the middle of the coronavirus outbreak. Costa Cruises’s Smeralda cruise ship docked north of Rome was checked for suspected coronavirus cases but allowed to disembark after reports of alleged passengers came negative.
Carnival’s Princess Cruises quarantined about 3,700 people on board one of its ships near Japan after a guest who didn’t have any clinical signs of the virus aboard the ship tested positive for the new coronavirus on Saturday, nearly six days after exiting the ship.
Almost 2,000 tourists are being detained on a cruise ship run by Genting’s Dream Cruises in Hong Kong and checked for the virus after some crew members reported symptoms associated with the illness.
On Friday, the trade association for cruise operators, Cruise Lines International Association, said that the cruise sector is “one of the greatly well-equipped and expertized when it comes to handling and monitoring health conditions of those on board.”
The association advised operators to decline boarding people who have travelled to China or remained in contact with those who exhibit symptoms of the new coronavirus.