Passenger tells of sneezing waitress
A WAITRESS on the Ruby Princess cruise ship sneezed in the face of a passenger who later became so ill with coronavirus she was put in an induced coma, an inquiry heard.
Perth woman Ann Kavanagh boarded the liner with her husband and four couples to celebrate her birthday and 50th wedding anniversary.
“It was meant to be a very special time for us,” Mrs Kavanagh said yesterday.
“I certainly would never had gotten on that ship had I known I was going to get so sick.”
She said while dining at an on-board restaurant three days before the vessel docked in Sydney, she was shocked when a waitress taking food orders sneezed in her face.
“I was quite taken aback,” she said.
Mrs Kavanagh soon developed diarrhoea as the ship travelled back to Australia from New Zealand, and within days of disembarking at Circular Quay on March 19 she was hospitalised.
After flying straight back to Western Australia, she spent about one month at St John of God Midland Public Hospital and needed a ventilator for a week as she battled COVID-19.
“I couldn’t breathe, I’d been shivering . . . I had a high temperature,” she said.
“I got worse; I had respiratory failure.
“They put me into ICU and intubated me. I was in a coma for eight days.”
Mrs Kavanagh said two friends who had been sitting next to her at the restaurant also tested positive to the deadly disease, while her partner, Kevin, returned a negative result.
The inquiry heard that two months after being released from hospital, the coronavirus survivor still has not completely recovered.
“All my hair has fallen out, I used to have beautiful curly hair but I don’t have much of it now,” Mrs Kavanagh said.
“I’m still not well. I’m still not as I was when I first got on that ship.”
The inquiry continues.