Tag: Serenade of the Seas

The Royal Caribbean cruise ship facing a norovirus outbreak while at sea docked at PortMiami early Thursday morning, concluding a 13-night voyage.

Royal Caribbean reported the health concern to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vessel Sanitation Program on Sept. 28. By the time the ship arrived in Miami, federal health agency says 94 passengers onboard Serenade of the Seas reported falling ill. That’s about 5 percent of the 1,874 total passengers onboard. Four crew members out of 883 (0.5 percent) became sick, according to the CDC’s updated Sept. 30 report.

An outbreak is when 3 percent or more of a cruise ship’s passengers or crew have specific gastrointestinal symptoms. Cruise lines are required to report that.

Passengers who’d fallen ill on the Serenade of the Seas were isolated, disembarking separately upon arrival. A few passengers who didn’t fall ill did criticize the carrier for poor communication with guests and minimal transparency.

Otherwise, the return to land was relatively uneventful, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge.

No emergency services were reported to have been used to transport the ill on Thursday. Miami Fire Rescue and Miami-Dade Fire Rescue said they did not respond to any calls at the PortMiami for Royal Caribbean on Thursday. That indicates passengers who’d caught the virus were able to exit the vessel on their own.

“All passengers from Serenade of the Seas disembarked by 10:13 a.m.,” Suzy Trutie, communications director at the PortMiami, told the Herald in a brief interview. That was “on par” for similar-sized ships, she said.

By 4 p.m., Serenade of the Seas had already departed Miami, headed for Colon, Panama. It’ll arrive there on Oct. 5.

The ill passengers mainly experienced diarrhea and vomiting, the CDC said. The cause was classified as norovirus, a contagious virus that causes nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, and is commonly known as the stomach flu.

Serenade of the Seas left San Diego on Sept. 19 for PortMiami, the planned end of the voyage. From Oct. 11 to the end of the winter season, the vessel is scheduled to home port from Cartagena, Colombia, or Colon, Panama, according to CruiseMapper.

At PortMiami on Thursday, several travelers express frustration over how the outbreak was managed by the cruise line.

Denise Carlton had her luggage inadvertently put in the quarantined group for disembarking causing a several-hour delay that made her and traveling companion Linda Creek, 78, miss their flight back to Tennessee. Neither contracted the norovirus nor had any symptoms.

Creek, who lives in Jasper, Tenn., was also unhappy with Royal Caribbean’s lack of communication with guests aboard the vessel during the outbreak. She and Carlton said they recieved one email asking them if they were unwell and saying if so, to report to the ship’s infirmary.

But it didn’t inform them that other guests had fallen sick, said Carlton, 55 from Chattanooga, Tenn. Creek said she was getting better information from phone calls with her daughter, who wasn’t on the cruise. By noon Thursday they were still standing outside the terminal trying to figure out their next steps.

Meanwhile, in the Sept. 30 report, the CDC said that its Vessel Sanitation Program was “remotely monitoring the situation, including review of the ship’s outbreak response and sanitation procedures.”

It noted that in response to the outbreak, Royal Caribbean told them it increased cleaning and disinfection procedures according to their outbreak prevention and response plan, collected stool specimens from gastrointestinal illness cases for testing and isolated ill passengers and crew.

The 98 cases reported are for the entire voyage. That does not mean all of them were sick at the same time.