Coronavirus still wreaking havoc on lives of Westerdam passengers despite no cases on ship
Passengers of Holland America’s MS Westerdam may be relieved to hear that a woman on the cruise ship thought to have coronavirus is clear of the illness, but the chaos isn’t over for some.
“I am very happy for this passenger,” Lorraine Oliveira, a passenger who had been traveling from the U.K. on Westerdam with her family, told USA TODAY on Saturday.
But in England, she said they are taking no risks as they seek to protect the public health. She and her family have been asked to self-quarantine by Public Health England, which is under the Department of Health and Social Care. “Therefore that news does not change anything for us,” she added.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control on Friday said the 83-year-old American woman who was on the ship actually didn’t have coronavirus, despite earlier tests that came back positive in Malaysia.
“I have confirmed that all the passengers were tested, and they have come back negative for coronavirus, including the person who initially tested positive,” said CDC spokesperson Richard Quartarone. He said hospitalized woman “may have had a respiratory illness, but if she did, it was not COVID-19.”
Oliveira said that, back in England, she and her family have been asked to self-quarantine for another 14 days. She is being forced to miss work and her children are unable to return to school. She estimated her family is losing out on “quite an amount” of her salary while she’s in quarantine.
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The situation has also put financial stress on other passengers.
Elly Chybowski, who was traveling aboard the Westerdam with her husband, Timothy, was routed on flights from Cambodia through Tokyo and Dallas/Fort Worth on their way home to Madison, Wisconsin. Then “roughly two hours before our connecting flight from (Tokyo) to Dallas, we discovered that our tickets had been canceled for unknown reasons,” she told USA TODAY by email.
Panicked and unable to get answers, the couple rebooked flights on their own dime, an out-of-pocket expense that totaled $5,130. They arrived home Wednesday.
Once home, the couple were contacted by their local public health department, Chybowski said, noting that they had shared a dining room table with the woman who initially tested positive on the ship.
Considered a “medium-risk exposure,” the Wisconsin couple have self-quarantined until the end of the monitoring period Feb. 27, to mitigate the possibility of infecting others. Chybowski’s husband, who is a physician, has not be able to return to his practice, and their adult children have to drop off food in their garage.
“The disruption to the lives of so many is tremendous,” Chybowski said. “The emotional stress to all of us during the time of uncertainty before we got home is immeasurable.”
On Saturday, Chybowski reached out to USA TODAY with an update. “All four of us in Madison are still on home surveillance with our lives being disrupted and having the inability to return to work,” she said in an email.
“Looks like we are all stuck (although thankful that we are stuck at home and not elsewhere) until at least Monday until the CDC gives formal clearance to our health department,” she said the email.
On Wednesday, Muth voiced his concerns about social, career and financial consequences that may come with being associated with the Westerdam. But back in Michigan, life is starting to return to normal.
Muth, his wife, his daughter and her boyfriend, who were all on the cruise, are not being asked to self-quarantine. His wife has also been able to return to work as a nurse.
While his daughter has seen some negative comments on social media about the passengers’ return, he said things are improving.
“We’ll bear some of that for some period of time, but for most part we’ll let it roll off our backs,” Muth said.
Meanwhile, in a statement Saturday, the Malaysian Ministry of Health said the 83-year-old woman was showing improvement but still being monitored for a slight cough.
The ministry maintained that she had originally tested positive for coronavirus after being diagnosed with pneumonia and put into an isolation ward, according to the statement provided to USA TODAY by public relations officer Farahdila Wati Binti Mohd Khamde Khuzaini.
The news that the patient had been cleared came one day after the Cambodian Ministry of Health confirmed that the 747 crew members still on board the Westerdam tested negative for coronavirus; 781 passengers who were still in the country were cleared, too.
Throughout the cruise, Holland America maintained that no one on board had symptoms or tested positive for coronavirus, though the MS Westerdam was turned away at multiple ports, including Japan, Guam and Thailand, until Cambodia welcomed the ship.
“This false-positive test result has caused untold damage to hundreds of innocent passengers on the Westerdam from denied boarding on flights home to public shunning,” Steve Muth, a former Westerdam passenger from Michigan, told USA TODAY in an email Friday.
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Contributing: Andrea Mandell
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