Cruise ship an incubator
Twenty-one people aboard a mammoth cruise ship off the California coast tested positive for the new coronavirus yesterday, and 19 of them are crew, amid evidence that the vessel was the breeding ground for a deadly cluster of more than 10 cases during its previous voyage.
US Vice-President Mike Pence said federal officials were working with California authorities around the clock to bring the Grand Princess, with more than 3500 people on board, to a noncommercial port over the weekend and test everyone for the virus. There was no immediate word on where it might dock.
‘‘Those that will need to be quarantined will be quarantined. Those who will require medical help will receive it,’’ Pence said.
In the meantime, everyone on the ship remains holed up in their rooms as they await word about the fate of the ship.
The ship was heading from Hawaii to San Francisco when it was ordered on Thursday to keep its distance from shore so 46 people with possible coronavirus symptoms could be tested. On Friday, a military helicopter crew lowered test kits on to the 290-metre ship by rope, and later took them for analysis at a state laboratory.
Health officials undertook the testing after reporting that a passenger on a previous voyage, in February, had died of the disease.
In the past few days, health authorities have disclosed that at least 10 other people who were on the same voyage also were found to be infected. Some passengers on that trip stayed aboard for the current voyage – increasing crew members’ exposure to the virus.
Another Princess ship, the Diamond Princess, was quarantined for two weeks in Yokohama, Japan last month because of the virus. About 700 of the 3700 people aboard became infected in what experts called a public health failure, with the vessel essentially becoming a floating germ factory.
Meanwhile, the US death toll from the coronavirus climbed to 14, with all but one victim in
Washington state.
California emerged as the epicentre of the outbreak in the US when a Sacramento-area man who travelled on the Grand Princess last month during a visit to a series of Mexican ports later succumbed to the virus. Others who were on that voyage also have tested positive in northern California, Nevada, and Canada.
An epidemiologist who studies the spread of virus particles said the recirculated air from a cruise ship’s ventilation system, plus the close quarters and communal settings, made passengers and crew vulnerable to infectious diseases.
‘‘They’re not designed as quarantine facilities, to put it mildly,’’ said Don Milton of the University of Maryland. ‘‘You’re going to amplify the infection by keeping people on the boat.’’ He said the fallout from the ship quarantined in Japan showed the urgent need to move people off the ship and into a ‘‘safer quarantine environment’’.