Cruise ship full of sick passengers with nowhere to go

There’s been a lot of drama in the ocean with two cruise ships: the Holland America’s MS Zaandam and MS Rotterdam.

The Zaandam began its voyage from Buenos Aires, Argentina, on March 7 and was scheduled to end the sailing in San Antonio, Chile, March 21. But the cruise ship experienced an outbreak in the midst of its cruise and ports refused to allow the ship to dock.

The Rotterdam ship came in to pick up passengers and to offer supplies and testing and after that these two ships were waiting off the coast of Panama for a couple of days, trying to figure out where to go.

They decided to transit the Panama Canal and make their way to Florida but the Panama Canal initially refused entry to the cruise ship. However, for “humanitarian reasons” they decided to allow the ships to go through.

The ships have now transited the Panama Canal and are headed towards Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

But now they are facing new challenges with their latest attempt to dock.

The Florida Governor and Fort Lauderdale mayor do not want passengers to embark in Fort Lauderdale without adequate measures put into place. According to the mayor, “[n]o assurances have been given that they will be escorted from the ship to either a treatment facility or placed in quarantine.” 

Proposed adequate measures include:

• Triaging for nationals and sending them back on planes to their own country as soon as possible
• Taking sick Americans to hospitals that are not already facing over crowding or limited resources from local carriers
• Taking healthy non-symptomatic American passengers to military bases or similar destinations for a quarantine

Florida is already one of the hardest hit spots and cases are growing rapidly in the state. So it is completely understandable that they are being protective of their own citizens and trying to prioritize their health over those coming from a cruise ship, which would include many foreign nationals.

At the same time, these people are in serious need.

They have been stuck isolated in cabins for a couple of weeks now and four passengers have died. There are almost 200 sick people on board, many of which likely have coronavirus since they have reported flu like symptoms.

Personally, I feel like this needs to be figured out by Holland America.

Hindsight is 2020 but they shipped this cruise out on March 7 and at that time we had a firm grasp on the dangers of this disease and how it could be quickly transmitted in an environment like a cruise ship. In fact, just a week later they suspended their cruise operations for 30 days.

Holland America should be going over and beyond to comply with any quarantine demands from local state officials since they are largely responsible for allowing this cruise to take place.

Hopefully, a solution can be worked out soon between the local officials in Florida and perhaps military bases that can take these people in because it sounds like they are in a pretty miserable situation.

Holland America put out the following statement:

 “We are still finalizing the details for where and when our guests will disembark, and are asking for the same compassion and humanity to be extended for our arrival.”

Maybe some of these cruise lines could exhibit a little bit more compassion and humanity when deciding to takeoff on their cruises in the midst of a global pandemic. I could understand some ships that didn’t see this coming when they launched out for cruises back in January or even February but by the time the first week of March rolled around we knew what we were dealing with on a global scale.

H/T