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Princess ship suffers virus outbreak en route to Port Everglades
By Tom Stieghorst
Business Writer
Posted January 22 2004
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A Princess Cruises ship arriving at Port Everglades today has had an outbreak of intestinal illness that affected more than one of every 20 people on the ship.
The Coral Princess is due back from a 10-day Panama Canal excursion that left Fort Lauderdale on Jan. 12.
By the fourth night of the cruise, 33 people reported being sick with nausea, diarrhea and other symptoms, Princess spokeswoman Tori Benson said.
Over the course of the cruise, 133 passengers and 18 crew members were listed as ill. As the number of sick passengers rose, Princess began extra sanitizing and disinfection measures designed to limit the spread of the illness.
Benson said the outbreak peaked on the fourth day of the cruise. "They weren't all sick at once and they aren't all sick now," she said. Three passengers and two crew reported being ill as of Wednesday, Benson said.
Dave Forney, head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control's Vessel Sanitation Program, said the illness is not linked to anything in food or water on the ship. Princess said the illness was caused by a norovirus, a common source of intestinal illness that is spread by personal contact.
The ship will be sanitized before it leaves on its next cruise today. New passengers will be notified by letter of the norovirus outbreak and advised of precautions.
Another Princess vessel, the Sun Princess, also had a higher than normal number of ill passengers, although under the 2 percent threshold level at which cruise ships are required to report to the CDC.
Sun Princess docked Tuesday at Port Everglades. Forty-one passengers out of a total of 1,990 and five crew of a total of 869 were ill. "That's less than what we would consider an outbreak," Forney said.
A third Princess ship, Regal Princess, which docked on Wednesday at Port Everglades, had 13 reported cases of illness out of 1,553 on board, which Forney said was within an average range for a normal cruise.
"There is no common denominator," Forney said. Norovirus tends to be more prevalent in the winter months. Forney said there are also outbreaks on land but because cruise ships are required to report illness outbreaks, they are more often noticed.
Forney said ships not operated by Princess Cruises have also been affected. Cunard Line's Queen Elizabeth 2, currently on a 110-day world cruise, has also reported higher than expected levels of illness in January, although it is short of the 2 percent mark.
