48 Costa Atlantica cruise crew members have coronavirus; Ruby Princess departs Australia
On Thursday, Costa Cruises revealed an additional 14 crew members tested positive for coronavirus on the Costa Atlantica, raising the number of cases on the ship from 34 on Wednesday to a total of 48. The ship has been in dry dock for repairs in Nagasaki, Japan, since Jan. 29.
The 14 new positives came from a round of 66 tests, Costa Cruises said in a release provided to USA TODAY by Roger Frizzell, spokesperson for parent company Carnival Corp.
Japanese officials are investigating the coronavirus outbreak on board Costa Atlantica, which has puzzled authorities. The southern port city has a relatively low number of infections and the vessel has been docked for almost three months.
The outbreak on the Italian-operated Costa Atlantica surfaced Tuesday when officials from Nagasaki and Mitsubishi Heavy Industry, which is in charge of repairs and maintenance on the ship, announced that a crew member developed a cough and fever.
As of Thursday, 47 of those crew members remained quarantined on board. Frizzell said one was medically disembarked Wednesday after becoming seriously ill and has since been put on a ventilator.
Costa Cruises said the ship has 623 crew of 36 different nationalities, including a Japanese translator. There are no passengers on board due to the ongoing repair work. Costa Atlantica’s repair work was moved to Nagasaki due to the pandemic, which began in China, where the work was originally scheduled to be done.
The remaining staff do not have serious symptoms and remain quarantined on board in single rooms, except for those on essential duties, including cooking and delivering food for their colleagues, officials said. Some of the essential crew also are infected.
Nagasaki officials have said they plan to have the crew of the Costa Atlantica quarantine themselves on board unless they develop serious symptoms, and seek ways to let others who tested negative return to their countries.
Nagasaki is getting support from a military medical team and plans to test all the remaining crew by Friday.
Details of the movements of the crew are not clear, but officials suspect they had either contracted the virus while in town or when the ship switched crew in the past few weeks.
Mitsubishi initially said the crew has not left the dock since March 14, when Nagasaki reported its first coronavirus case and asked all crew members to stay on board. But the company acknowledged the following day that some members who passed body temperature checks and other requirements had been allowed off the ship.
There have been other people outside of the crew that have come and gone from the ship though.
“Outside technicians and local agents have been on the ship as part of the dry dock maintenance program being undertaken in Japan,” Frizzell told USA TODAY Thursday. “They have been required to undertake temperature checks before being permitted to board.”
As infections in Japan continue to spread nationwide, the outbreak on the ship has raised concerns about testing and hospital capacity in Nagasaki, which has 17 people infected, 11 of whom are hospitalized. As of Thursday, Japan had nearly 12,000 cases and 299 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins data.
Earlier this year, the U.S.-operated cruise ship Diamond Princess had 712 infected people among more than 3,700 passengers and crew while it, too, was quarantined in Yokohama, Japan, near Tokyo. A total of 13 people have died, according to Johns Hopkins data.
In mid-February, while discussing evacuation plans for Americans on board, health official Dr. Anthony Fauci said the quarantine on the Diamond Princess had failed. At the time, 454 people had been infected.
“As it turned out, that was very ineffective in preventing spread on the ship,” Fauci told the USA TODAY Editorial Board. Every hour, another four or five people were being infected.
MS Artania on weeks-long journey back to Europe with passengers
The MS Artania, a German-flagged ship owned by Phoenix Reisen, was quarantined in the Western Australian port of Fremantle for two weeks due to coronavirus and is now on her way back to Europe, according to a release posted on the cruise line’s website. The ship still has passengers on board, and three passengers died of COVID-19; all had underlying conditions.
The quarantine began on April 3, according to an earlier release, after at least 36 people on board had tested positive for coronavirus in late March.
On March 15, after learning that ports in the South Pacific would be closed, Phoenix Reisen gave passengers the opportunity to return home on flights organized by the line or to remain on the ship for the journey home.
On March 16, 199 passengers chose to return home and 832 remained on board with 515 crew members.
Later, on March 25, while the ship was stopped in Fremantle to refuel, people on board began exhibiting coronavirus symptoms, and local authorities found that seven of nine people tested were positive. They were taken to local hospitals.
On March 29, another 860 passengers and crew members were flown back to Germany on four chartered planes. More than 800 of the people who flew back were passengers, but 16 passengers chose to remain on board.
MS Artania left Australia Saturday, the day after local officials ended its 14-day quarantine. During its time in quarantine, the ship was cleaned and disinfected by local authorities, according to the release.
On Sunday, 41 nonessential European crew members flew home from Perth. They were joined by 18 passengers who had been quarantined in hotels due to positive COVID-19 tests who were deemed healthy. Another eight who completed their quarantine re-boarded the ship to make their way back to Germany.
Just over 400 other crew members remained on board when the ship departed Australia. Since the majority of the remaining crew is from the Philippines and Indonesia, MS Artania has set sail towards Southeast Asia to bring crew members to Bali on Thursday and Manila the following Tuesday for disembarkation, according to the release.
Then, MS Artania, which will have about 75 crew, its captain and an unspecified number of remaining guests on board, will transit the Suez Canal. According to the release, the ship is expected to arrive in Bremerhaven, Germany, on May 31.
Nine passengers remain in quarantine in Australia due to positive tests.
USA TODAY has reached out to Phoenix Reisen for comment.
Costa Serena and Costa Neo Romantica
Two other cruise ships, the Costa Serena and the Costa Neo Romantica, are also docked in Nagasaki with 669 and 393 crew members, respectively. Nagasaki city official Kaori Matsuo said so far there has been no report of anyone showing symptoms.
‘Inherently high-risk setting’:Are cruise ships unsafe – and will they change?
Ruby Princess departs Australia
Princess Cruises, Ruby Princess, which prompted a criminal investigation after it became the country’s largest single source of coronavirus infections, left that countryThursday.
The Ruby Princess has been linked to 19 deaths in Australia and two in the United States. According to Johns Hopkins data, Australia has recorded 67 coronavirus deaths. A government inquiry is underway into why 2,700 passengers and crew were allowed to disembark in Sydney on March 19, before the test results of sick passengers were known.
Many passengers have since flown out of Sydney. Two died at home in the United States, including 64-year-old Los Angeles resident Chung Chen, whose family is suing Princess Cruises for more than $1 million for failing to alert passengers to the risk. Princess Cruises is a subsidiary of Carnival Corp., which is incorporated in Bermuda and headquartered in California.
New South Wales state, which includes Sydney, has banned further cruise ship arrivals until new health protocols are agreed with the federal government.
The Ruby Princess had delayed its departure from Port Kembla, south of Sydney, because of sick crew members, several of whom have died in Sydney hospitals.
It left the cargo port with a skeleton crew late in the afternoon nudged by two tug boats.
A large banner strung across its stern said: “Thank You Illawarra,” referring to the coastal region around the port.
Princess Cruises did not immediately disclose where the ship was heading, though media reports have said its destination is the Philippines.
On Thursday morning, 300 Filipino crew left the ship and were taken to Sydney to catch a charter flight to Manila. They traveled from Port Kembla in 40 buses because of social distancing rules.
Health authorities said everyone who remains on board has been cleared of the virus.
“We’ve had the isolation procedures long enough, we’ve not seen new cases, we also understand the medical capability on this ship, so for all of those reasons, we have formed the view that the ship is now in a position to set sail,” New South Wales Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant told reporters.
State police are investigating whether the ship’s management downplayed potential virus cases before passengers disembarked.
Police ordered all foreign cruise ships to leave the state in late March, fearful that sick crews could overwhelm Sydney hospitals.
Ruby Princess refused to leave, fearing a coronavirus emergency on the open seas.
The ship’s doctor, Ilse Von Watzdorf, told the first day of a New South Wales government inquiry on Wednesday that she was surprised health authorities had allowed passengers to leave in Sydney before the test results were known.
Von Watzdorf gave evidence to the inquiry by video link from the ship, where she has been in quarantine.
The ship had returned to Sydney after an 11-day cruise to New Zealand, which was regarded as a low-risk destination.
Contributing: David Oliver, USA TODAY, The Associated Press
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