Over 140 Royal Caribbean cruise passengers and crew sickened by unknown sickness

Over 140 passengers and crew members aboard a Royal Caribbean Worldwide ship have been sickened by an unidentified sickness, the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention’s Vessel Sanitation Program mentioned Wednesday. 

The ship, the Navigator of the Seas, was on a weeklong, round-trip cruise that departed from Los Angeles on July 4. The ship made three stops in Mexico, in accordance with ship monitoring website CruiseMapper, then returned to Los Angeles on July 11, which is when the outbreak was reported to the CDC. 

Of the ship’s 3,914 passengers, 134 reported being sick through the journey. Seven crew members out of 1,266 reported sickness. The signs they skilled included diarrhea, vomiting and belly cramps, the CDC mentioned. 

Royal Caribbean advised the CDC that its crew elevated cleansing and disinfection procedures in accordance with their outbreak prevention and response plan, collected stool specimens for testing, remoted sick passengers and crew members, and consulted with the Vessel Sanitation Program. This system remotely monitored the state of affairs, the CDC mentioned. 

The CDC mentioned extra work will probably be finished to find out the reason for the outbreak. Typically norovirus, a contagious abdomen bug, is responsible for gastrointestinal sickness outbreaks on cruise ships, the company mentioned. 

The latest sicknesses comply with a number of different cruise ship outbreaks in latest months. In February, almost 80 passengers aboard a Holland America Line ship turned sick. That very same month, over 80 passengers and crew members on a Princess Cruises ship fell sick throughout a 16-night cruise. An outbreak on a Cunard cruise line luxurious ship making a monthlong worldwide voyage additionally affected greater than 240 passengers and crew members earlier this yr.