A Princess Cruises ship with more than 100 passengers on board who had caught norovirus during its sailings arrived to Port Canaveral on Monday morning, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Caribbean Princess completed an 11-day voyage that had departed on April 28 from Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, during which passengers and crew suffered from an outbreak of the highly contagious virus, which has predominant symptoms of diarrhea and vomiting.
The outbreak affected 102 of the 3,116 passengers on board, or 3.3%, as well as 13 of the 1,131 crew, or 1.2%, according to the CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Program outbreaks website.
The outbreak was first reported on May 7.
The CDC reported that Princess Cruises’ response to the outbreak included increased cleaning and disinfection, the collection of stool specimens for testing and the isolation of ill passengers and crew.
Princess also consulted with the CDC program about cleaning procedures and reporting ill cases ahead of its arrival.
A CDC crew arrived to the ship to conduct an environmental assessment and outbreak investigation to assist the ship in controlling the outbreak.
The ship’s arrival to Port Canaveral marks the beginning of what’s planned to be more than four months of Caribbean and Bahamas sailings into October before it moves back to Port Everglades.
This is the fourth outbreak tracked across all cruise lines this year by the CDC, not including the Hantavirus-stricken ship MV Hondius, owned by Oceanwide Expeditions, that evacuated passengers to Spain over the weekend.
The CDC-tracked cases this year have included two E. coli outbreaks on the Oceania Insignia and Regent Seven Seas Mariner and another norovirus outbreak on Princess Cruises’ Star Princess.
Cruise lines are required to report any suspected outbreak to the CDC, although norovirus can be prevalent on land, as well. The hotel industry, for instance, is not required to report similar outbreaks.