Princess passenger had symptoms while at sea
One of the passengers taken to hospital with Covid-19 when the Ruby Princess completed its cruise around New Zealand has said he developed a sore throat before the ship arrived on our shores.
Tony Londero and his wife Kerry, who live near Tamworth, New South Wales, were quoted in the Weekend Australian on Saturday as saying they had looked forward to the 13-night cruise around New Zealand with their friends Linda and Paul Cheyne.
The vessel departed Sydney on March 8. Tony Londero told the Weekend Australian he developed a mild sore throat as the vessel approached Milford Sound on the morning of March 11, but he was not concerned.
The following day the ship docked at Port Chalmers and the couples boarded a shuttle into Dunedin, where they spent a few hours looking around.
By this stage Londero was feeling sufficiently unwell to decide that he should keep a distance from Paul, who had heart disease, so as not to pass on the illness.
On March 13, while visiting Akaroa, Londero started to feel his muscles aching, but ‘‘I didn’t feel sick’’, he told the Weekend Australian.
By the time the ship visited Wellington the next day Londero had come down with a bad headache.
‘‘So we got together [with the Cheynes] and had a talk and I said, ‘I’m starting to get very concerned about this and I don’t actually feel very well. I think we should really rethink our situation.’ From then on Kerry and I never went to the restaurant. We stayed in the room. If we went out it was to somewhere that was very quiet,’’ he told the newspaper.
The vessel went to Napier on March 15. From there it cut the trip short and returned to Australia.
By March 16 Londero and developed a fever and was still suffering a bad headache. When he went to the ship’s medical centre the staff thought he was having a heart attack.
He remained in isolation in the medical centre until the ship docked in Sydney on March 19. There were no facilities to test for
Covid-19 on the boat, so a swab was taken for testing when it docked.
When the ship docked Londero was taken by ambulance to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.
‘‘I was worried that they were going to put me in a ward with people with coronavirus. That scared me because I didn’t believe I had it ... But then I had a seizure.’’
He tested positive to Covid-19 and was hospitalised for a week. His wife Kerry tested positive, too.
Londero told the Weekend Australian he had caught the virus from someone unknown to him and may have unknowingly passed it on to others.
The Ruby Princess is linked to more than 20 coronavirus deaths and more than 600 infections across both Australia and New Zealand.
Stuff last week revealed that staff on the ship were aware of a passenger on board with undiagnosed ‘‘influenza like illness’’ when the ship docked in New Zealand ports but did not isolate them.
All cruise ships are required to report to health authorities about the health conditions of passengers on board before docking.
A maritime declaration of health, obtained by Stuff under the Official Information Act, was sent to the Auckland District Health Board on March 15 stating there had been 18 people reported with illness
By that stage all but six had recovered. Those six were in isolation.
Because Londero did not report his illness until March 16 he cannot have been among those 18 people.