Please look!! Quarentine Ship in Med.

Why are passengers not allowed to get off?

Hundreds of British tourists on a cruise ship have come down with gastro-enteritis as the vessel heads towards the Greek port of Piraeus.

At least 430 people aboard the British-flagged ship, carrying 1,900 mostly British tourists and 837 crew members, are believed to have been affected

The ship was expected to arrive at the port of Piraeus at 5am, but health officials said passengers would not be allowed to leave the ship in the port.

"It has been decided after consulting the company managing the ship that the vessel will only dock at Piraeus to take in supplies and then leave. The passengers will not get off the ship," a Health Ministry spokesman said.

www.channel4.com...

Originally posted by John bull 1
Why are passengers not allowed to get off?

Quite simply because it's a highly contagious form of the infection, so many ports are not allowing the passengers to disembark. That's fairly common in such cases. Don't worry, there's no 'Andromeda Strain' conspiracy here.

it's okay, the ship will probably be allowed to dock somewhere in the united states and passengers allowed off, so that they can fly back home.

Just a note of irony here. Notice the google ads? Want a cruise ship job?

I do find it odd that those who were not infected couldn't disembark. I certainly would've gotten off in Greece. It'll be interesting to see what happens when they dock in Gibraltar.

Originally posted by kukla
I do find it odd that those who were not infected couldn't disembark. I certainly would've gotten off in Greece. It'll be interesting to see what happens when they dock in Gibraltar.

It's not odd atall. BBC news last night had a small reoprt on it and it appears that the 400 people are infected woth Norwalk virus (not sure if I've spelled that right!), it's a HIGHLY contagious and VERY nasty virus. A Hospital near me was infected with it a while back. They had to close off a couple of wards and put messages on the radio and TV asking people NOT to go to the Hospital unless it was basically a life or death emergency as the virus was spreading so virulently, and so easily communicable. If you're young, old or sick it can kill, so you can see why people don't want to risk letting the ship dock in their ports.

Just becaase passengrs may not look infected doesn't mean they aren't. You wouldnt have been allowed to disembark at Greece. Firstly, because the liner didn't dock, so you would have had to swim for shore. SEcondly if the Greek authorites saw you swimming for sure, their little 'greeting commitee' would immediately place you in prison quarantine.

While management styles vary from one country to another, there is a precedent where sick passengers are taken off at the next stop.

www.chron.com...

I would think this would be the most logical course of action. Why send a ship with 400 sick out of 2800, back to sea? Aren't more passengers likely to get sick on the way to Gibraltar?

The ship did dock in Greece and an excursion was planned there, but the Greek Health Ministry decided to keep the passengers on. I would still rather get off in Greece, have them throw me in quarantine for a week, then fly home. The longer the conditions are allowed to persist, the more infections there will be.

"It has been decided after consulting the company managing the ship that the vessel will only dock at Piraeus to take in supplies and then leave. The passengers will not get off the ship," a Health Ministry spokesman said."

I would think this would be the most logical course of action. Why send a ship with 400 sick out of 2800, back to sea? Aren't more passengers likely to get sick on the way to Gibraltar?

The ship did dock in Greece and an excursion was planned there, but the Greek Health Ministry decided to keep the passengers on.

Well the news footage I saw taken in Greece showed the ship moored close to shore, not docked, with access (by the authorities) by boat.

Why send a ship with 400 sick out of 2800 back to sea?
Simple answer. Any of the rest of the 'unsick' could be infected but not showing symptoms yet, and If you let any infected people ashore, you're risking spreading the virus to the local population. That way you could end up with 28000 cases.

As I said before, my local hospital had to virtually close it's doors to the public because of the same virus. We're not just talking a bad case of the squats. This stuff spreads like wildfire and can kill. I know what I'd say if I were a Harbourmaster and they asked to dock in my port.

The latest news is that there appear to be no new infections, and it looks as if they'll be allowed to disembark when they reach Gibraltar anyhow.

A lot of people gonna be doin' a lot of suin' !

SabbyJ,

You're right, the insurance companies will be handing out some serious cash.

I understand the virulent nature of Norwalk. I'm not a epidemiologist or anything like that, but I would think that if 400 out of 2800 are already sick, more people will contract the virus on the way to Gibraltar. I know the latest report says that's the case but I find it hard to believe. How well can you really quarantine people on a cruise ship? IMHO, they should gotten the sick off in Greece, and put them in quarantine. Then those that are not showing any symptoms continue to Gibraltar. This approach reduces the likelihood of the remaining 2400 passengers contracting the virus and you allow enough time for incubation in those that are infected but not showing symptoms.

man, what an ugly situation. I can see the point of view of the docking city, but aren't people less likely to get proper medical care on a cruise ship than in an actual hospital? if everyone from the ship is kept properly quarantined on land, there shouldn't be a big problem, but I can see how that'd be quite hard to enforce.

www.channel4.com...

Update - Spain has closed its border with Gibraltar.....

Apparently most of the passengers are ok now, though one news report said two elderly passengers died. That hasn't been mentioned on any of the others I've seen though.

As for moving the passengers off the ship into a hospital, that's pretty unrealistic when you think about it. How many wards would be needed and how many staff would it tie up to quarantine a couple of hundred people in one go? It wouldn't be practical. You'd end up with the regular patients being forced to sleep in the corridors whilst the main wards were used for the ship's patients. Much more practical to keep them onboard, in their cabins, where they aren't spreading the infection and are not placing a HUGE strain on some local Hospital.

Here's some snippets from Jubilee's link..

"Spain even closed its border with Gibraltar due to concerns over the liner. Effectively cutting off the colony, it resulted in several hundred Spanish workers unable to get through.

"The kids have not seen land since the 28th. They were confined to a cabin with no windows for three to four days with vomiting and diarrhoea. We were not allowed to leave the cabin," Mr Martin said.

"Now they have taken our passports off us so we can't go home. They should have turned us straight back to the UK when they realised the scale of the problem."

"It's been like a mortuary on board. Everybody is sick and we're not allowed to go in public areas. Coming back from a day trip to Dubrovnik, people were vomiting on the coach.

"It's horrendous. They are walking around in white suits like Ghostbusters spraying everything with chemicals. P&O should have been honest from the start."

Closed borders, passports taken...this smells.

It seems everyone is fine except for 1 person showing signs of illness and 2 elderly people died from heart conditions. But I dont think I would be hopping back on board that ship so soon next week.

www.cnn.com...



Thursday, November 6, 2003 Posted: 2:08 AM EST (0708 GMT)


SOUTHAMPTON, England -- The cruise ship Aurora, dubbed the "sick ship" after hundreds of its passengers fell ill with a stomach virus, has docked in its home port of Southampton.

The Aurora meanwhile is scheduled to depart Southampton at the start of another cruise late Thursday evening.






[Edited on 6-11-2003 by thehippiedude]

Strange thing about this topic. on the page it says -1 reply???


update!! it now says 12 replys....but a few others now say -1 ?? wierd
oh well!



[Edited on 7-11-2003 by asala]

Originally posted by MorningtonCrescent
man, what an ugly situation. I can see the point of view of the docking city, but aren't people less likely to get proper medical care on a cruise ship than in an actual hospital? if everyone from the ship is kept properly quarantined on land, there shouldn't be a big problem, but I can see how that'd be quite hard to enforce.

Actually (I got back from a cruise earlier in October), there's a medical clinic on the ship and it's easy enough to bring out MDs and other personnel to the ship. The ships take these things very seriously; one patient had a heart attack in the middle of one of the Alaskan fjords and they had him off the ship (we were a long way from any port) in 3 hours' time. Meanwhile, he was stabilized by the clinic doctor, who's a full MD.

Holland America (the line we went on) is absolutely paranoid about Norwalk and so forth. We had to use hand sanitizer towels as part of the security admitting procedure to get back on the ship.

You might not want the passengers running off till they've been quarrantined -- they can spread the disease to hotels or on airplanes. It's nasty stuff.

You can not just quarantine only the 400 who were sick, because everyone on the ship has been exposed. You carry a virus for about a long time before you feel any effects. So there for they should be held until the time period says the virus will die out its simple as that. If you just say treat it and street it then later on we could have an epidemic on our hands. This is not a conspiracy by the government testing out a new virus or anything some times things are just nature. More then likely everyone on that ship will get sick from the illness and the best thing would be treat them all for it, then give them the proper time for the virus to naturally die then let them off the ship.

-Core

You know.... I don't think I'm going on any cruise ships anytime too soon. It seems this is happening way too often. Wonders just how well they disinfect these ships, after an outbreak?? I seen a news story a few months back showing them cleaning a cruise ship. It didn't look like they were doing a real thorough cleaning job to me.

I agree that they should keep them on board the ship.