80 Fall Ill on Cruise Ship in Caribbean
About 80 people became ill while sailing the Caribbean on a Royal Caribbean Cruises ship, the fifth luxury vessel to have such an outbreak in recent weeks, officials said Friday.
The illness has not yet been identified, but victims suffer from nausea, vomiting and diarrhea often associated with a Norwalk-like virus, a nonlethal virus that affects about 181,000 Americans each year. Nearly all recover within a few days.
More than 1,000 passengers and crew members on ships sailing the Caribbean from U.S. ports have come down with gastrointestinal illnesses over the last month.
“They just came in this morning, so it is a little premature to determine the cause,” said David Forney, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention division that oversees sanitation aboard cruise ships stopping at U.S. ports.
Forney said symptoms reported in the latest cases appear similar to those in previously reported outbreaks.
A spokeswoman for Royal Caribbean, Lynn Martenstein, said 70 passengers and 10 crew members aboard the Majesty of the Seas reported flu-like symptoms during the four-day cruise to the Bahamas.
About half of those passengers chose to get off the ship at Key West, the last stop before returning to Miami. They were bused with their traveling companions to Miami.
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