MIAMI (WSVN) - A Royal Caribbean cruise ship with nearly 2,000 passengers on board docked in PortMiami days after, health officials said, nearly 100 people fell ill with norovirus during a nearly two-week cruise.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 94 passengers and four crew members aboard the Serenade of the Seas came down with the highly contagious disease.
The outbreak was reported during a 13-day voyage. The ship set sail from San Diego on Sept. 19, making stops in Mexico and Costa Rica. After crossing the Panama Canal, the ship docked in Cartagena, Colombia on Monday.
The ship docked at PortMiami just before 6 a.m. on Thursday.
Norovirus is a gastrointestinal virus that can spread quickly, especially in closed environments like a cruise ship. Its symptoms include diarrhea, vomiting and weakness.
Passengers who disembarked gave further details about the outbreak.
“I started feeling really funny in my stomach, and it only lasted like, I don’t know, 36 to 48 hours,” said a passenger who identified herself as Margie. “I stayed in bed for a whole day; I was quarantined.”
“I got sick, I was the only one in our state room that got sick, probably four days before we arrived in Miami,” said passenger Artur Madej. “Watery stool for, like, three or four days nonstop.”
Madej believes the number of passengers who got sick was likely higher than what the CDC reported.
“I talked to a lot of friends, and a lot of them were sick as well, and none of them reported it, because if you report it, they quarantine you,” he said.
Cruise ships are required to report norovirus outbreaks to the CDC. The crew of the Serenade of the Seas first reported their ship’s outbreak on Sunday.
Once an outbreak is reported on a ship, the protocol is to isolate sick passengers and ramp up sanitation.
“We were notified when we were in Huatulco, Mexico, we were notified of them being aware of it, and they were immediately cleaning everything,” said passenger Leslie Nilsen.
“This is our, probably, 30th cruise, I mean, it’s fairly unusual, it hardly ever happens,” said Madej.
Longtime semi-pro cruisers like the Aimes and Nilsen families said the outbreak didn’t really affect the cruise much.
“It’s just a smooth sailing. Yup, it wasn’t anything different than normal other than they had extra cleaning,” said passenger Bob Aimes.
“And when I say cleaning, I mean, they started on the bottom and worked up to the top, and then you would see them coming back down again,” said Nilsen. “In the Windjammer [Marketplace], they had everything barricaded off. They had the staff, all the staff — there was en engineer from the engineer room, there was the lifeguard in the Windjammer — because it was blocked off, and they were serving us instead of us just going right up and getting the food.”
Passengers who spoke with 7News said the treatment they received from the crew was impeccable and gave them a new appreciation for the staff that makes this cruise ship sail around
“It was all good, because they gave you free room service, and they took really good care of you,” said Margie.
“They did an incredible job,” said Nilsen.
“They were very amazing. They worked many, many hours to make sure we were safe,” said passenger Sheila Aimes.
Once passengers disembarked at PortMiami, the ship’s crew spent the rest of the morning sanitizing the cruise ship in order to have it ready for the next set of passengers.
“We’re going to go see the Panama Canal,” said Lucy Diaz, who was embarking on the new voyage.
The Serenade of the Seas is scheduled to set sail on a three-day voyage to Panama on Thursday afternoon. The initial onboarding was delayed as crew member deep cleaned the ship.
Cruise ship officials notified passengers that they had “…implemented enhanced cleaning and sanitation procedures…While it is impossible to guarantee that the optimized measures taken will prevent all further cases, these actions have generally been effective at stopping the spread of this illness.”
“I’m all prepared. I got Lysol and wipes,” said Diaz.
She said despite the stomach bug suffered by many on the previous voyage, she’s ready for her weekend getaway.
“Good hygiene and we’re going to be just fine,” she said.
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