More than 90 passengers and crew members on a Royal Caribbean International cruise ship which set sail from Tampa, Florida, on Feb. 1 for a weeklong cruise came down with a gastrointestinal illness, causing vomiting and diarrhea.
According to , the ship returned Saturday after making stops in Cozumel, Roatan Islands, Belize City, and Costa Maya.
The outbreak happened on Royal Caribbean’s Radiance of the Seas, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a . It’s not clear what caused the illness.
The CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Program said it was made aware of the outbreak Tuesday, halfway through the ship’s journey.
Royal Caribbean did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday, and it’s unclear if the outbreak affected the itinerary.
There were 2,164 passengers and 910 crew members on the ship. The CDC said 89 passengers and two crew members fell ill. Everyone who was sick isolated, and crew members were collecting “stool specimens from gastrointestinal illness cases for testing.”
Janet Kruse, 57, of the Chicago suburbs, was on the cruise with her dance group, , and returned home Saturday. Although Kruse did not fall ill, she said about 10% of her group — 120 people aged 50 to 80 — did.
Kruse said that the first person in her group got sick Sunday, within 24 hours of being on the Radiance. The second person in her group was sick by dinner that day, she said.
Another member of her group heard an announcement Sunday afternoon that already more people than usual were reporting they weren’t feeling well, so the ship was planning to take measures to keep things cleaner and to “keep people as well as they could for the duration of the voyage,” Kruse recalled.
To keep the sickness from spreading, the crew on the ship increased cleaning and disinfection procedures.
“VSP is remotely monitoring the situation, including review of the ship’s outbreak response and sanitation procedures,” CDC’s press release stated.
By Monday, the ship had already enacted measures to stop the spread of the bug, Kruse said. She said crew members were stationed at the breakfast buffet to serve passengers with food to eliminate as much contact as possible. While walking around the ship, she said she saw crew members with buckets of soapy water washing all the hand rails multiple times a day.
Passengers who became ill were required to quarantine for 24 to 36 hours, Kruse said. While they were stuck in their cabins, Kruse said passengers had complimentary food and medication delivered to them throughout, and also received a letter at the end of the trip stating Royal Caribbean would compensate them for the time spent in quarantine.
“It was very seamless. Nothing was mentioned. There was no panic,” Kruse said. “They were very matter-of-fact about it,” she added, referring to the crew, which she described as proactive, professional and calm.
The experience was “very uniting,” Kruse said. “We all knew that people were getting sick and we’re just going to deal with this as best we can.”
Kruse said Royal Caribbean never named the illness and that they never mentioned norovirus, but she said the company was collecting information from the passengers via survey about whether they were sick.
Norovirus is often the cause of gastrointestinal illnesses on cruise ships, the CDC said, and can be identified from a stool sample.
“In this outbreak, samples are pending confirmatory testing,” the agency said.
