Illness causes mass vomiting, diarrhoea on Royal Caribbean's Explorer of the Seas

TESTS are being undertaken to determine the source of more than 600 vomiting and diarrhoea cases on a Royal Caribbean cruise.

Caribbean Cruise Ship Outbreak

THE Royal Caribbean cruise line has ended a ship's 10-day trip in the Caribbean early after hundreds of passengers and crew members were sickened with a gastrointestinal illness.

And the number of passengers affected could be much higher than initially reported. NBC quotes an official as saying at least 564 passengers and 47 crew members had reported symptoms.

The Miami-based company made the announcement a few hours after officials from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention boarded the Explorer of the Seas during its US Virgin Islands port call to investigate the illness and evaluate the outbreak response.

Caribbean Cruise Ship Outbreak

"New reports of illness have decreased day-over-day, and many guests are again up and about. Nevertheless, the disruptions caused by the early wave of illness means that we were unable to deliver the vacation our guests were expecting," Royal Caribbean Cruises said in a statement.

The decision to end the trip came after consultation between CDC officials and members of the company's medical team, the company said.

The CDC said earlier that 281, or nearly 10 per cent, of the 3050 passengers aboard the 15-deck ship reported getting sick during the cruise that left Cape Liberty, New Jersey, on Tuesday.

On Sunday evening, the cruise line said the outbreak of the gastrointestinal illness with vomiting and diarrhoea "spiked over the weekend".

Tests would have to confirm what caused the outbreak, but fast-spreading norovirus is often to blame for similar symptoms sweeping closed quarters like those on cruise ships.

Caribbean Cruise Ship Outbreak

Royal Caribbean said special cleaning products and disinfectants proven to kill norovirus were being used to clean ship before it returned to the US. It said a full sanitisation program would be carried out after the Explorer of the Seas reached its home port on Wednesday.

Janet Diaz, a company spokeswoman, said CDC representatives boarded the Explorer of the Seas when it docked in St Thomas, the main island of the US Virgin Islands. During the previous port call in Puerto Rico, the ship underwent "extensive and thorough sanitising" to help prevent more people from getting sick, she said.

Passengers and crew who fell ill have "responded well to over-the-counter medication being administered onboard the ship," Ms Diaz said.

Caribbean Cruise Ship Outbreak

On Friday, an Explorer of the Seas passenger named Arnee Dodd tweeted that she had fallen ill aboard the ship and was quarantined with the other sick people. The Connecticut woman wrote that ship employees "put a lockdown on food and are constantly cleaning everything".

Royal Caribbean said it was "taking several steps" to compensate passengers for the shortened trip. It also sought to assure customers scheduled for the ship's next voyage that "all possible measures will have been taken to prevent further problems".