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 Once the captain announced their vessel may be tainted with
coronavirus, Grand Princess cruise ship guests like Kathleen Reid
were left with little to do but contemplate the prospect of extended
isolation at sea, or worse.
"My first reaction was, 'Oh, crap. We're going to be quarantined,
and maybe get sick,'" Reid, 67, a retiree from Granbury, Texas said.
"We don't know what's happening, so we're just kind of in limbo,
waiting."
Reid, who spoke to Reuters by cell phone on Thursday, was one of
some 2,300 passengers stuck with about 1,100 crew members aboard the
Grand Princess, idled off the coast of California a day after the
ship was denied entry to its home port in San Francisco.
Like the Diamond Princess, the liner held in quarantine off Japan
last month, the Grand Princess is owned by a unit of Carnival Corp,
the world's largest cruise operator.
Experts have criticized Japanese bureaucrats' handling of the
onboard quarantine, as ultimately about 700 people were infected and
six have died in what was at the time the largest concentration of
coronavirus cases outside China.
California Governor Gavin Newsom insisted that the Grand Princess
remain at sea until passengers and crew complaining of flu-like
symptoms during a 15-day roundtrip cruise to Hawaii could be tested
for possible coronavirus infection.
On Thursday, the U.S. Coast Guard airlifted a batch of diagnostic
kits to the ship via helicopter, and public health officials said
samples collected would be flown back to a San Francisco Bay Area
state laboratory for testing.
FEWER THAN 100 TO BE TESTED
Results were expected in about 24 hours, said Mary Ellen Carroll,
executive director of the city's Department of Emergency Management.
State and local officials acted after learning that 35 people aboard
the ship had fallen ill, and that two passengers who had traveled on
the same vessel for a voyage last month between San Francisco and
Mexico later tested positive for coronavirus.
One, an elderly man from Placer County near Sacramento with
underlying health conditions, died this week, marking the first
documented coronavirus fatality in California. The other, from the
Bay area, was described by Newsom as gravely sick.
Health officials say both individuals likely contracted the virus
while they were aboard the ocean liner.
The Princess cruise line said fewer than 100 passengers and crew
from the Hawaii voyage of its Grand Princess have been identified
for testing, including those who were ill.
Tests will also be given to dozens of holdover passengers from the
Mexico trip who stayed on the ship for the voyage to Hawaii, as well
as "guests currently under care for respiratory illness," the cruise
line said in a statement. They will remain quarantined on the ship
until cleared by medical staff.
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Specialists from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were
working with local health authorities and the Coast Guard to coordinate the
operation.
They also were seeking to contact some 2,500 passengers who disembarked in San
Francisco on Feb. 21 after the earlier cruise to Mexico. One of them, a Canadian
woman from the province of Alberta, tested positive for the virus this week,
health officials there said.
'SOCIAL DISTANCING'
Princess Cruises has canceled the next scheduled departure of its Grand Princess
Hawaii voyage from San Francisco, which had been set for March 7.
Passengers on the current cruise, meanwhile, were forced to make do with a
rapidly shrinking choice of amusements.
Having already lost access to many of the ship's favorite attractions - the bar,
casino, shops, food buffet and gym - guests were also urged to practice "social
distancing," making an effort to keep at least 6 feet away from strangers on the
ship, the company said. By midday on Thursday, they were asked to confine
themselves to their staterooms until further notice.
It was unclear what would occur should anyone now aboard the ship test positive
for the respiratory virus, which has infected more than 95,000 people worldwide,
most of them in China, where the outbreak originated.
"Once we have results from the tests, the CDC and the state will determine the
most appropriate location for the ship to berth, and the location needs to
provide for the safety of the surrounding community as well as the passengers
and crew," Carroll told reporters on Thursday.
She said the ship might be directed to an arrival point other than San
Francisco.
Reid, who is traveling with her husband, said the ship's captain was keeping
passengers informed of developments throughout the day with announcements every
couple of hours, and that fellow guests seemed to be taking the uncertainty
mostly in stride.
"People are, I'm sure, a little anxious, but nobody has just gone screaming mad
yet," Reid said, adding she had seen no obvious signs of anyone being sick.
"Hand-washing is a big deal," she said, but "nobody is walking around sneezing
or coughing."
(Reporting and writing by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by
Cath Turner in Los Angeles and Jane Lee in San Francisco; Editing by Bill
Tarrant, Daniel Wallis & Simon Cameron-Moore)
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