Crown Princess Virus On Cruise Ship Caused 172 People To Fall Ill

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has announced that at least 172 people have been infected by the latest norovirus outbreak aboard the Princess Cruises’ Crown Princess. The cruise ship had sailed from Los Angeles to Hawaii and Tahiti for 28 days and docked in Los Angeles on Sunday.

Norovirus is a very contagious virus. You can get norovirus from an infected person, from contaminated food or water, or by touching contaminated surfaces. The virus causes your stomach or intestines or both to get inflamed (acute gastroenteritis). This leads you to have stomach pain, nausea, and diarrhea and to throw up.

Read the report below posted by CDC:
Number of passengers who have reported being ill during the voyage out of total number of passengers onboard: 158 of 3,009 (5.25%) [Note: 145 passenger cases (4.82%) in the past 15 days of the voyage]

Number of crew who have reported being ill during the voyage out of total number of crew onboard: 14 of 1,160 (1.21%) [Note: 11 crew cases (0.95%) in the past 15 days of the voyage]

Predominant symptoms: Vomiting, diarrhea

Causative agent: Norovirus

Actions: In response to the outbreak, Princess Cruises and the crew aboard the ship are taking the following actions:

• Increasing cleaning and disinfection procedures according to their outbreak prevention and response plan,
• Making announcements to notify onboard passengers of the outbreak, encourage case reporting, and encourage hand hygiene,
• Collected stool specimens from ill passengers and crew
  • tested specimens with onboard rapid norovirus test (results were positive), and
  • made plans to send them to the CDC lab,
• Making multiple daily reports of gastrointestinal illness cases to the VSP,
• Making plans to send corporate management public health, hotel, housekeeping team to assist the onboard management with the infection control response plan,
• Alerting passengers set to embark on November 16, 2014 about the outbreak prior to check in,
• Is consulting with CDC on plans for their comprehensive sanitation procedures in San Pedro, California on November 16, 2014, including:
  • providing additional cleaning personnel to complete a thorough public and accommodation intensified sanitization cleaning and disinfection,
  • planning staged disembarkation for active cases to limit the opportunity of illness transmission to well guests, and
  • planning for sanitation of terminal and transport infection control procedures.

A CDC Vessel Sanitation Program environmental health officer will board the ship in San Pedro, CA on November 16, 2014 to conduct an environmental health assessment and evaluate the outbreak and response activities. Specimens will be sent to the CDC lab for confirmatory testing and genome.