More than 100 passengers on Cunard cruise ship affected by illness outbreak

Sign up to Simon Calder’s free travel email for expert advice and money-saving discountsGet Simon Calder’s Travel emailMore than 100 passengers on a cruise holiday have fallen ill after an outbreak of sickness on a Cunard ship. Out of the 1,824 passengers on board Queen Victoria, 116 have suffered from some form of gastrointestinal illness, as reported by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which equates to around 6 percent of all passengers. Additionally, fifteen crew members have also been affected, with the main symptoms being diarrhea and vomiting. The Queen Victoria ship, which has been in service since 2007, is currently on a 107-night world voyage and set sail from Southampton on 11 January. It is scheduled to return to the UK port at the end of April. The current leg of the voyage is a 16-night cruise between Florida’s Port Everglades and San Francisco, California, which departed on 22 January, with some passengers disembarking on 7 February. The CDC reported that issues began on 22 January, and at present, the cause is not known. The Vessel Sanitation Program is remotely monitoring the situation. In response to the outbreak, the crew increased cleaning and disinfection procedures as per the ship’s outbreak prevention and response plan, and isolated the affected passengers and crew. A spokesperson for the cruise line told The Independent: “Cunard confirmed that a small number of guests had reported symptoms of gastrointestinal illness on board Queen Victoria. They immediately activated their enhanced health and safety protocols to ensure the wellbeing of all guests and crew on board.” This incident follows shortly after almost 100 passengers on a Celebrity Cruises ship, Celebrity Constellation, contracted norovirus after it departed from Florida on 3 January. The health agency recorded 14 incidents of gastrointestinal illness in 2023 that breached its threshold for public notification. It also states that while people often associate cruise ships with acute gastrointestinal illnesses, such as norovirus, outbreaks are relatively infrequent on the vessels.

Author: OpenAI