Reuters

03/12/2002 04:17 PM Michael Connor

U.S. health inspectors boarded the cruise ship Carnival Fascination on Monday to investigate the latest bout of sickness to hit cruise ships that sickened more than 200 people during a weekend cruise from Miami.

The 260-metre Carnival Cruise Line vessel was the third ship in recent weeks to report large outbreaks of vomiting, diarrhoea and other symptoms of Norwalk-like virus, which is considered nondeadly and generally clears up within a few days.

A fourth ship, the 700-guest Radisson Seven Seas Cruise's Seven Seas Mariner, also had 14 crew and four passengers fall sick with stomach problems toward the end of a just-completed 40-day cruise from Venice, Italy, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, company president Mark Conroy said on Monday.

The cruise line, a unit of privately held conglomerate Carlson Companies Inc., reported the illness to federal health officials, but test results suggest it was not the Norwalk-like virus, Conroy told Fox television affiliate WSVN.

He said the illness was thought to be salmonella, possibly contracted either when people ate during a shore excursion in Morocco or from eggs and ice cream bought for the ship in Spain. The vessel was leaving on Monday on a Caribbean cruise.

Disney Cruise Line, a unit of the entertainment group Walt Disney Co., last Wednesday cancelled a week-long cruise in order to disinfect its Disney Magic ship after more than 450 people reported Norwalk-like sicknesses on two cruises.

Holland America, which like Carnival Cruise is also a unit of Carnival Corp., cancelled a voyage of its vessel Amsterdam to disinfect the ship. It also cancelled an Alaska cruise last summer because of a Norwalk-like viral outbreak.

The Amsterdam, which had more than 500 people report illnesses, resumed regular Caribbean sailings on Sunday. A Holland America spokesman in Seattle said the line was confident the virus had been eradicated from the Amsterdam and that no new illnesses had been reported as of midday Monday.

Bob Dickinson, president of the Miami-based Carnival Cruise Line, said that some 190 passengers and 13 crew on the Fascination reported symptoms.

"We won't know for a while what is causing the illnesses, but we are treating it like Norwalk-like virus," company spokeswoman Jennifer de la Cruz said earlier.

Some of the 2,428 passengers leaving the eight-year-old Fascination after it returned from the Bahamas as scheduled on Monday complained of sickness, while others said the illnesses had had no effects on their trip.

"My family is sick," one woman told local television while waiting to drive away from the ship. "My son is so sick he is back there with a barf bag."

New Passengers Offered Refund

De la Cruz said health inspectors from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control were aboard the Fascination now berthed in the Port of Miami and crews were scrubbing down the ship before 2,183 new passengers boarded for a scheduled four-day Caribbean sailing later on Monday.

The new passengers were being informed in writing of the illnesses aboard the Fascination and offered either a fare refund or a trip on another Carnival cruise.

"About 4 percent of guests have decided to take us up on this offer and cancelled," Dickinson told a news conference.

De la Cruz said Carnival decided to go ahead with its Monday sailing despite the outbreak because the company had successfully wiped out similar illnesses with cleanings on other ships, including last spring on the Carnival Pride.

"It's not a standard protocol that you have to pull a ship out of service. It's not always necessary to break the cycle" of transmission, she said.

Holland America and the Disney Cruise Line both scrubbed down their infected ships between scheduled sailings before taking the costly step of cancelling voyages and keeping passengers off the ships for a week or longer.

Experts at the CDC last week said the Norwalk-like virus blamed for the illnesses aboard the Disney and Holland America ships was a common one and frequently produced illnesses in nursing homes, camps, schools and other venues where large numbers of people gather. The virus is transmitted person-to-person and through contaminated food and beverages.

Carnival Cruise Line's medical director, Steve Williams, said the company was cooperating closely with the CDC and so far found no reason to believe that sanitation or food handling practices were implicated in the outbreak on the Fascination.

Industry analysts and representatives have said the recent cruise ship outbreaks affecting about 1,000 passengers have so far had little effect on the industry, which is expected to carry 7.4 million passengers from North America during 2002.

Both Disney and Carnival have said the cancelled voyages and cleanings have had no significant financial effects on their corporations. Dickinson said there had not been an unusual number of cancellations of future bookings despite the flurry of sicknesses on cruise ships in recent weeks.

-- Anonymous, December 03, 2002

Answers

On tv I heard someone connected with the cruise line say that there was no way the cruise line could prevent someone with the illness from boarding the ship and infecting others. So, no matter how much they clean, if one infected person is on board the illness will spread as that infected person mingles among the passengers.

Interesting about that reference to eggs in Spain. i was told last night by a co-worker who just returned from a cruise [a healthy one, LOL] that those cruises that depart from Florida do not take anything on board in the way of supplies from anywhere other than Florida. Which means that if there is a connection to the foodstuffs it started in Florida.

Could be revenge from the pig farmers who had to let the pigs out of the cages according to the recent passing of a state constitution amendment.

-- Anonymous, December 03, 2002