World cruise, begun before pandemic, nears end of odyssey

Passengers on a luxury liner’s around-the-world cruise, begun before the globe was gripped by the novel coronavirus pandemic, are finally approaching the end of their odyssey after 15 weeks at sea.

Their ship, the Costa Deliziosa, heads to ports in Spain and Italy, two of the countries most devastated by the outbreak.

Costa Crociere, an Italian cruise company, said on Saturday that the cruise, which set sail from Venice in early January with 1,831 passengers, has reached the western Mediterranean, with no cases of COVID-19 aboard.

One hundred and sixty-eight Spanish passengers will disembark from the nearly 300-meter vessel Deliziosa at the port of Barcelona, Spain, early this week, the company said. Then it will head to its final destination, Genoa, Italy, where it is expected the remaining passengers, Italians and those of other nationalities, will disembark on Wednesday.

French authorities had rebuffed a request by Costa for permission for several hundred passengers to disembark in Marseilles.

The Deliziosa was originally due to return to Venice on April 26. After the UN World Health Organization pandemic alert in March, the ship, which had just made a port call in Fremantle, Western Australia, made only technical and refueling stops, before the journey back toward the Mediterranean, which took it through the Suez Canal, the company said.

Passengers said that ports in Oman, along the Suez Canal, as well as in the Seychelles and Indian Ocean ports, refused to let the ship dock.

A Frenchwoman whose in-laws are aboard the Costa Deliziosa garnered about 100 signatures in an online petition to urge the French government to intervene to get them home.

But French authorities barred the Deliziosa from letting more than 1,000 passengers disembark before its final destination in Italy.

The regional administration for Bouches-du-Rhone in southern France cited a nationwide ban on allowing foreign cruise ships to dock, as part of France’s virus-related confinement measures. Italy has also barred foreign cruise ships as it battles COVID-19.

Last month two other Costa cruise ships pulled into Italian ports, including one that was earlier carrying passengers who tested positive for the virus before being disembarked in France.

It was unclear if or where the passengers who were due to finally step aboard land after weeks of sailing aboard the Deliziosa would be quarantined as a precaution.