COVID-19 pandemic on ships

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In the beginning of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic , symptoms of a COVID-19 infection and COVID-19 infection were detected in passengers of several ships from March 2020 . The passengers were then quarantined . These ships also included several cruise ships in particular .

background

The disease COVID-19 and the pathogen SARS-CoV-2 , which triggered the epidemic in the People's Republic of China at the end of 2019 , were not known beforehand. The first human cases of the disease became known in December 2019. The authorities and the WHO initially assumed that the pathogen causing the infection was not or only very difficult to transmit from person to person. The first reports of cases in the People's Republic of China were followed by reports from Thailand (January 13, 2020), Japan (January 15) and South Korea (January 20). The fact that the virus can in principle be transmitted from person to person was confirmed by the Chinese authorities on January 20, 2020. The infectiousness of the new disease, which already exists in the incubation period before the onset of symptoms, turned out to be a particular problem . The WHO classified the situation on January 20, 2020 as a public health emergency of international concern ("international health emergency" for short), and on March 11, 2020 as a pandemic.

Numerous states imposed entry restrictions, and there were extensive restrictions on air and travel. Many cruise lines temporarily ceased operations. Numerous states and cities around the world temporarily closed their ports to cruise ships.

Cruise ships

Several cruise ships were quarantined in the first few months of 2020 due to the spread of COVID-19, while others were turned away and had to dock at another port. Passengers suffering from health problems were sometimes brought ashore to isolation or quarantine stations. Several states brought their citizens back home and quarantined them there. In some cases, the handling of the quarantine measures on board and around disembarkation was assessed as a risk for the spread of the virus.

Confirmed trap by cruise group (as of April 23, 2020)
Group Total number of cases Infected passengers Infected crew Infected others Deaths
Aurora Expeditions 128 0 1 127 1
Carnival Corporation 1740 1158 500 82 53
Disney Cruise Line 37 3 33 1 0
Fred Olsen Cruise Line 13 1 12 0 0
Genting Cruise Lines 3 3 0 0 0
MSC Cruises 101 39 62 0 1
Norwegian Cruise Line 14th 1 8th 5 0
Phoenix travel 64 6th 9 49 3
Royal Caribbean 468 181 293 12 6th
TUI Cruises 6th 2 4th 0 1

Costa Smeralda

The Costa Smeralda was quarantined in Civitavecchia on January 30, 2020 after a passenger showed symptoms of the coronavirus. However, the suspicion was not confirmed and the quarantine was lifted in the evening.

World Dream

The cruise ship World Dream, carrying over 3,700 people, was quarantined off Hong Kong on February 5, 2020 after a guest tested positive for the novel corona virus upon arrival. The passengers were allowed to leave the ship on February 9, 2020 after a four-day quarantine.

Diamond Princess

The Diamond Princess was quarantined on February 5, 2020 with 3711 passengers and crew members on board in the port of Yokohama until February 19. There were ten German nationals on board the ship, including two with SARS-CoV-2 findings. Infected people were distributed to hospitals in Yokohama and the surrounding area for treatment. On February 13, 219, including 15 members of the crew and one member of the health authorities, tested positive, according to media reports. The number rose to 542 by the end of the quarantine on February 19. By April 14, a total of 712 infected people on board the ship were reported to the WHO, there were a total of 13 deaths and 32 critical cases.

On February 12, 2020, the Japanese authorities began to let passengers in poor health disembark; Those who tested positive were placed in an isolation ward, those who tested negative could be taken to a quarantine station. Five days later, a large uninfected proportion of the approximately 400 US passengers were brought back to quarantine in the US. Other countries, such as Australia, Great Britain, Italy, Canada, South Korea and Hong Kong, announced that they would bring their citizens back home. The US Disease Control Agency, the CDC, imposed an entry restriction on February 18 to protect US public health, affecting everyone aboard the cruise ship. After leaving the ship, they had to wait two weeks before being allowed to enter, affecting more than 100 US citizens. People who had already returned had to remain in quarantine in the USA. As of February 19, people who did not test positive were allowed to leave the Diamond Princess . Anyone who had close contact with people who later tested positive was initially not allowed to leave the ship. Three days later, more than 100 passengers (contact persons) were brought ashore to a quarantine facility. In the days that followed, several nations reported positive virus tests in returning passengers, including Israel, Japan and Australia. On February 22nd, the German ex-passengers landed on the military part of Berlin-Tegel Airport , they were supposed to spend another two weeks in domestic isolation. The number of infected people on or off board the Diamond Princess in the port of Yokohama rose to 691 on February 24, 2020. The captain was the last to leave the Diamond Princess on March 2, 2020 .

The infectiologist Kentarō Iwata, who works at Kobe University, criticized the Japanese health authorities after inspecting the ship and accused them of errors in the management of the quarantine. For example, there was no division into “green” (virus-free) and “red” (possibly contaminated and therefore not safe) zones, nor were there any rules for wearing a face mask. His criticism received a great deal of attention in Japan as a video on YouTube and led, among other things, to a request from the opposition in parliament to Health Minister Katsunobu Katō . The American infectious disease specialist Anthony Fauci , director of the American NIAID , assessed the quarantine strategy on board the ship as having failed due to the high number of infections. The United States Disease Control Agency, CDC, gave a similar assessment, warning that dismissing passengers posed a risk for the virus to spread.

These cases of infection are not assigned to Japan in the WHO reports , but are listed as international transport (see the section on weekly statistics in the pandemic article and COVID-19 pandemic / statistics ).

712 people were infected, 13 of whom died. 331 of the infected remained symptom-free.

Virus material was still detectable 17 days after the evacuation of the ship.

Japanese researchers later deciphered the virus genes of around 70 infected people. They found a very specific DNA characteristic in all samples and concluded that all 712 infections were due to a single COVID-19 case ( superspreader ) before the start of quarantine.

Westerdam

The Westerdam in the first half of February was allowed, although there were no confirmed cases, several ports in various countries in Southeast Asia not start before permission Cambodia received. On February 13, the ship reached the port of Sihanoukville . After many passengers disembarked on February 14, 2020, a US citizen was diagnosed with the virus on her onward journey in Malaysia one day later. After that there were still 236 passengers and 747 crew members on the ship who had to remain on the ship; on arrival there were 1,455 passengers and 802 crew members. Anyone who has already left the ship should now be tracked down and tested; Anyone who has already traveled on should be contacted by the local health authorities at their destination. Since many passengers had already traveled on, experts feared that the spread of the new coronavirus epidemic would now be much more difficult to narrow down. Thailand initiated an entry ban for passengers on the Westerdam . According to the shipping company, there were 57 German citizens on board. Two of them returned to Brandenburg on February 18 , they had no symptoms and had to remain in domestic isolation. This corresponds to the recommendation of the Robert Koch Institute to classify fellow travelers on the cruise ship as contact persons .

Grand Princess

On March 7, 2020, it was announced that there had been a number of cases of infection on board the Grand Princess ; the cruise ship has been off San Francisco , California , USA since March 4, 2020 . There were 3,533 people on the Grand Princess , and 19 crew members and two passengers tested positive for the coronavirus. The shipping company Princess Cruises announced that passengers from the US state of California should be tested there in a clinic and, if necessary, isolated, for other passengers this should be done in other states. The crew members are to be quarantined and treated on board. On March 9, 2020, the Grand Princess was allowed to dock in the port of Oakland .

Costa Magica

On March 11, 2020 it was announced that there were four guests with flu-like symptoms on the Costa Magica . The ship was then quarantined 6 miles off the coast of Martinique . On March 13, 2020, the suspicion of an infection with the coronavirus was confirmed in a guest and a crew member.

Zaandam

The Zaandam departed from Buenos Aires on March 5, 2020. There were more than 250 cases of illness and death. Chile , Peru and Argentina refused to moor the ship. The Rotterdam took to 3 April 2020 from the Zaandam about 1,400 people who were apparently healthy. 450 passengers and 602 crew members, including 193 passengers with flu-like symptoms, remained on the Zaandam . Florida Governor Ron DeSantis then checked whether he could allow the two ships to enter the port of Fort Lauderdale. On April 4, 2020, the Zaandam and the Rotterdam were allowed to dock in the port of Fort Lauderdale , Florida after intervention by US President Trump . A day later, passengers who were not sick were flown out, many of them were Australian citizens.

Artania

At the end of March there were dozens of COVID-19 patients on board the cruise ship Artania of the German shipping company Phoenix Reisen . The ship was allowed to dock in the port of Fremantle , Western Australia . On April 3, 2020, the death of a German passenger was reported in a clinic in the city of Perth . He was one of the passengers who got stuck on the Artania . In total, three people, one crew member and two passengers on the ship died, with one of the passengers may not have died of COVID-19.

Since there were many German citizens on board, more than 800 passengers were flown to Germany with four Boeing 767s operated by Condor. This was the largest return campaign in the history of the FRG. About 450 crew members remained on board, which was quarantined in Fremantle. The Prime Minister of Western Australia called for the ship to return to Germany. After the end of the quarantine on April 17, 2020, the ship left Fremantle on April 18, 2020. In addition to the ship's crew, there were eight or 16 passengers on board, depending on the source, who could not be flown out for medical reasons or fear of flying.

Parts of the ship's crew were disembarked in Jakarta on April 24 and in Manila on May 1, before the ship set off for Bremerhaven. It arrived here on June 8, 2020.

More cruise ships

As of April 5, 2020, tens of thousands of people were still waiting on other cruise ships. The provider Carnival Cruise Line assumed that around 6,000 of its customers were stuck on cruise ships.

Australia is particularly affected by the cruise ships under quarantine, around 1,400 COVID-19 patients were infected on a ship, that is around 25% of all infected people in Australia (as of April 5, 2020). In early April there were around 20 ships (including the Ruby Princess ) off the Australian coast, with around 15,000 crew members. Although the passengers were often flown to their home countries, the crews had to stay on board. In addition to the risk of infection, the service employees, for example, were affected by wage cuts or layoffs.

Similar problems were also faced in Miami in the US state of Florida , as three major cruise companies are based there and most cruises to the Caribbean start and end from here. Florida's governor refused to accept passengers from affected ships because the hospitals in the state were already overloaded, with one exception for the Zaandam . There were diplomatic disagreements because there were a particularly large number of Australians on board who were flown out, but at the same time Australia did not allow cruise ships affected by COVID-19 to dock in its ports.

The Costa Atlantica was in Nagasaki for repair work from the end of January . By mid-April 2020, 34 of the 623 crew members had tested positive.

In March, a woman who had been on a cruise aboard Costa Victoria tested positive for the coronavirus after leaving the ship in Crete . The ship was then no longer allowed to call at the actual port of destination Venice . The Italian Ministry of Transport finally assigned the ship to Civitavecchia as the port of call. After tests, passengers were able to leave the ship without symptoms. They were initially accommodated in a hotel in Rome before they could fly from Rome to their home countries.

The Mein Schiff 3 was the end of April some time in Cuxhaven after some crew members were tested positive. The crew members had to stay on board first. Some of them had expired employment contracts and were no longer receiving wages. Around 1900 crew members were later flown out.

Warships

USS Theodore Roosevelt

The USS Theodore Roosevelt had with stand March 31, 2020 more than a hundred victims.

Charles de Gaulle

In mid-April 2020 it was announced that 1,041 crew members of the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle and its escort ships had tested positive. All 2300 crew members were tested, the soldiers in Toulon and the surrounding area were isolated for 14 days. The ship last had a stopover from March 13 to 16 in Brest.

Rescue ships

Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, migrants and refugees are trying to get to the EU via the Mediterranean . Italy and Malta have closed their ports to private rescue ships due to the risk of infection.

Alan Kurdi

The Alan Kurdi of the aid organization Sea-Eye picked up about 150 people from two wooden boats off Libya on April 6, 2020. Some people were evacuated by the Italian coast guard, a total of 146 people were brought to the ferry ship Raffaele Rubattino of the operator Tirrenia off Sicily. She was taken care of by the Red Cross and will be tested on board.

Aita Mari

On the Aita Mari in April 2020, people were waiting for a safe harbor. Some were transferred to an Italian ferry off Palermo.

Individual evidence

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