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Another Princess Norovirus Outbreak?

Written by T.I. Cruiser on February 8, 2012 · Leave a Comment

“One piece of good news for the next group of cruisers is that back to back outbreaks are relatively rare.”

I have never been afraid to admit when I am wrong, so here I stand before you, hat in hand. In my last blog entry “Two Princess Cruise Ships Suffer Norovirus Outbreak“, which was about the Norovirus outbreak onboard the Ruby Princess and Crown Princess I made a mistake. My exact words were, “One piece of good news for the next group of cruisers is that back to back outbreaks are relatively rare.” Well, it looks like I may have jinxed one of the cruise ships.

Yesterday it was announced that the Crown Princess would end its current cruise a couple of days early amid another Norovirus outbreak. This time nearly 4% of the more than 3000 passengers and 5 percent of the 1,178 crew members have taken ill. The Crown will be returning to Fort Lauderdale on Thursday, in an effort to clean-up and prevent any further outbreaks. A joint effort between the cruise line and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) will take part in a two day sterilization and sanitization project.

Cruisers who are being affected by this change in itinerary are being by Princess. Passengers will receive a full refund of their cruise fare, coverage of any airline change fees for those passengers who did not book through the cruise line, hotel accommodations if needed and a 25 percent future cruise credit. While I know none of this will be able to make up for the time lost and inconvenience of an altered/canceled vacation, I thought Princess was very fair in their compensation. Normally, I am the first to complain about a cruise line doing the bare minimum to make things right with wronged passengers, not this time. Let’s just hope this joint cleaning effort can get this problem under control before any more vacations and memories end up getting ruined.

Future voyages are expected to depart on time, beginning Saturday February 11th.

Two Princess Cruise Ships Suffer Norovirus Outbreak

Written by T.I. Cruiser on February 4, 2012 · Leave a Comment

The latest piece of negative cruise related news has to do with two of Princess Cruise’s ships suffering from an outbreak of the Norovirus. The Crown Princess and the Ruby Princess both departed from Florida last weekend with the Crown returning today and the Ruby set to dock Sunday.

As you may know, Norovirus is a common gastrointestinal illness that if not caught immediately can quickly spread. The most common symptoms of Norovirus are vomiting and diarrhea. While many often refer to Noro as a cruise illness, what they fail to report is it is far more common in so many other places. Hotel resorts, school cafeterias, assisted living facilities and even your neighborhood restaurant are just as, if not more likely to have Norovirus as any cruise ship. The difference is when a cruise ship has an outbreak it is required to report the news. Since bad news involving cruise ships is always a hot topic this sort of thing typically will spread like wildfire.

Severity of the Noro outbreak onboard the Princess ships

If you are wondering about the numbers, here they are:

Onboard the Crown Princess, out of a possible 4200 passengers and crew, approximately 140 passengers and 18 members of the crew are infected.
Onboard the Ruby Princess, out of a possible 4200 passengers and crew, 81 passengers and 9 members of the crew are infected.

Princess announced that the next sailings on both ships have been pushed back as the ships need to be fully sanitized before the next group of passengers can board. One piece of good news for the next group of cruisers is that back to back outbreaks are relatively rare. Although there isn’t much that can be done on a cruise line level in terms of preventing a Noro outbreak, they are excellent at dealing with the virus once detected. Both ships will be thoroughly scrubbed down and sanitized, a process which takes several hours. In short when these two ships finally leave port they will likely be the cleanest they have been in quite some time. Due to this process both ships will depart from Florida several hours later than scheduled.

First Norovirus Case of the New Year

Written by T.I. Cruiser on January 11, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Well it didn’t take long for us to have the first Norovirus outbreak of the New Year. This past weekend a five-night sailing on Royal Caribbean’s Radiance of the Seas had 150 reported cases of the virus. Those 153 sick passengers was out of a total 2,336 passengers but also included 3 crew members (I hope they weren’t waiters).

As I have stated before on this blog Cruise ships must report any cases of Norovirus that are treated onboard their ship to the Center for Disease Control. Additionally any time the reported number of cases is above 2 percent of the passengers and crew a separate notification is required with any reports over the 3 percent threshold being made public.

While outbreaks like this do receive a lot of publicity the truth is they aren’t really very common. Each year thousands of ships depart and return to U.S. ports yet there were only 14 outbreaks recorded last year. However, the way these incidents are covered we are led to believe they are much more prevalent.

Impact to the next sailing of the Radiance of the Seas was minimal with there being a 5 hour delay in its departure. During this delay the entire ship was wipe down and sanitized before any new passengers were allowed to board.