The Grand Princess roundtrip cruise of a "lifetime" from San Francisco to Hawaii ended in an anxiety-filled holding pattern off the Northern California coast while passengers and crew members with flu-like symptoms were given tests for the coronavirus.
Cruise ship members said that they found out the ship was infected with coronavirus after watching the news, not from the captain or members themselves.
The cruise had over 2,000 passengers with 19 crew members and two passengers tested positive for the coronavirus. Before you assume that is small, they only had supplies to test 45 people. That means almost 50% of the people they tested, were positive. "These passengers will not be released into the general public," federal health officials said.
So what are they going to do for those who don't test positive? They will be broken up into four groups. "If passengers do not require acute medical care following health screenings, those who are California residents will go to a federally-run isolation facility within California for testing and isolation," federal health officials said. Nearly 1,000 passengers who are California residents will complete the mandatory quarantine at Travis Air Force Base and Miramar Naval Air Station, and residents of other states will complete the mandatory quarantine at Joint Base San Antonio Lackland in Texas or Dobbins Airforce Base in Georgia.
It seems that many cruise ships were unprepared to deal with such a situation. Passengers were not aware of dangers until COVID-19 had already spread, and cruise ship workers did not exercise proper hygiene to prevent spreading of the disease nor had they been trained to deal with outbreaks. Hopefully many of the issues cruise ships are now facing due to COVID-19 will result in them being better prepared for the next outbreak.
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