The cruise industry’s decision to keep sailing for weeks after the coronavirus was first detected on a ship helped carry the virus around the globe and contributed to the mounting toll, health experts and passengers say.
Story by Rosalind S. Helderman, Hannah Sampson, Dalton Bennett, Andrew Ba Tran
Video by Sarah Cahlan, Joyce Lee, Atthar Mirza and Elyse Samuels
Washington Post April 25, 2020
On land, more than 300,000 people worldwide had contracted the deadly coronavirus, and the governor of California had just ordered all 39 million residents to stay at home. But as the Celebrity Eclipse cruise ship steamed north across the Pacific Ocean on March 21, hundreds of passengers crammed together on the ship’s pool deck and overlooking gangways.
As they stood shoulder-to-shoulder and crowded around pool chairs, the captain led the ship in a special salute to health-care workers of the world, an onboard version of the nightly applause adopted by some cities to honor medical professionals battling the novel coronavirus.
The Eclipse and the Coral Princess were among scores of ships that continued voyages even after early outbreaks on other vessels, carrying thousands of international passengers to far-flung ports and helping seed the virus around the globe, health officials say.
Five days later and thousands of miles away in the Atlantic, a group of British passengers aboard another ship, Coral Princess, likewise gathered elbow-to-elbow to cheer the United Kingdom’s National Health Service.
The celebratory mood did not last long. Soon, passengers on both ships were contending with flu-like symptoms.
There have been 150 coronavirus cases and six deaths reported so far among passengers of the two vessels, which finally docked weeks after the virus was declared a global health crisis, according to a Washington Post tally. Two people died on the Coral Princess before passengers could even come ashore in Miami.
Hundreds of Celebrity Eclipse passengers participate in an event March 21 to honor health-care workers. (Photo by Vivian Miller)
A Post review of cruise line statements, government announcements and media reports found that the coronavirus infected passengers and crew on at least 55 ships that sailed in the waters off nearly every continent, about a fifth of the total global fleet.
The industry’s decision to keep sailing for weeks after the coronavirus was first detected in early February on a cruise ship off the coast of Japan, despite the efforts by top U.S. health officials to curtail voyages, was among a number of decisions that health experts and passengers say contributed to the mounting toll.
The virus affected travelers on 55 ships and killed at least 65 people, though the full scope is unknown.
At least 65 people who traveled or worked on the ships have since died, according to The Post tally, although the full scope of deaths is unknown. A similar review by the Miami Herald also identified 65 deaths linked to ships.
“We here on land, we were seeing all the news, all the ships,” said Jennifer Paul-Slater, whose brother Gerald Paul, a 72-year-old retiree from Atlanta, died of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, three days after disembarking the Celebrity Eclipse. “They could have taken more precautions.”
Public health experts say that a number of factors contributed to the rapid spread of the virus around the world, predominantly air travel; an estimated 4.54 billion people flew last year, compared with the 30 million passengers who traveled on cruise ships worldwide. But with hundreds of people dining, swimming and dancing together over a sustained period of time, the ships provide unique environments for disease to spread, they say.
“People on a large ship, all together, at the same time, all the time — you couldn’t ask for a better incubator for infection,” Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-diseases expert, said in February.
For their part, U.S. agencies struggled to manage the escalating crisis, initially deferring to the industry’s own plan to manage the pandemic. Until early this month, federal health officials also allowed passengers who left infected ships but appeared healthy to board commercial airlines home.
Even as the virus exploded into a global story, cruise officials failed to immediately recognize flu-like outbreaks as possible signs of the coronavirus, passengers said. In many instances, they did not immediately isolate passengers in their cabins when sickness broke out. In some cases, such as on the Celebrity Eclipse and the Coral Princess, those aboard said they were reassured by company officials there was no coronavirus infection on their ships — even as some travelers were wracked with fevers and coughs.
[Cruise ships kept sailing as coronavirus spread. Travelers and health experts question why.]
David Nystrom, 75, said he spent the last four days of the Eclipse voyage with his wife, Susan, in the medical clinic, wiping her brow and watching the ship’s crew administer her oxygen.
From her bedside, the Boca Raton, Fla., resident said he heard regular announcements from the ship’s captain, assuring passengers that the Eclipse was a “healthy ship” with no coronavirus on board.
“If they honestly thought that all these people who were getting sick had colds and bronchitis and pneumonia, I don’t know what to say,” Nystrom said.
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