Virus outbreak hits second cruise ship

Sunday, 01 Jun, 2006 0

Passengers have fallen ill on a Sea Princess cruise from Southampton – the second ship in a week to suffer from an outbreak of a virus.

The Princess Cruises vessel returnd to its summer UK home port this morning, a day earlier than planned, due to the problem.

A statement for the company said the illness was “strongly suspected” to be the highly contagious Norovirus which leads to diarrhoea and vomiting.

Earlier in the week the ship Van Gough was held at Harwich due to a similar outbreak, as reported by TravelMole.

Sea Princess has been on a seven-day voyage to France, Spain and Portugal with 2,258 passengers on board, more than half of them British. More than 200 people are reported to have been hit by the bug. Eleven still had active symptoms with the rest recovered but isolated to their cabins to avoid further spread of the virus.

Additional sanitation teams and medical staff joined the ship on Wednesday but Sea Princess missed out a visit to Lisbon in order to return to Southampton a day early to allow the ship to be disinfected in preparation for its next cruise.

The company statement said: “The safety and comfort of passengers and crew is always Princess’s number one priority. As is currently standard procedure across our fleet, all the ship’s passengers were provided with a precautionary health notice advising of widespread Norovirus activity and the health measures to avoid contraction and spread.”

The cruise line has offered 30% refunds to passengers and £150 per person towards a future cruise. But passengers disembarking at Southampton reportedly demanded full refunds.

Report by Phil Davies

Phil Davies

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