Cruise ship docks in San Francisco with COVID-19 cases on board
An unknown number of passengers and crew members aboard a Princess Cruise ship in California have tested positive for COVID-19. The ship carrying the infected individuals docked in San Francisco on Sunday and plans to depart again Monday afternoon.
People aboard the Ruby Princess caught the virus while on a 15-day Panama Canal cruise. Everyone on the ship had been vaccinated before departure, Princess Cruise said. Those who tested positive for coronavirus did not spread it to others on the ship, the company said.
"They were all asymptomatic or only mildly symptomatic and were isolated and quarantined while monitored and cared for by our shipboard medical team," Princess Cruise said in a statement.
Princess Cruise said some of the passengers who came down the virus didn't finish their quarantine while on board the ship. Those individuals either were sent straight home or "were provided with accommodations ashore to hotels coordinated in advance for isolation and quarantine," the company said.
This marks the second time this year that the Ruby Princess has arrived in California with COVID-positive passengers on board. Twelve passengers arriving from a 10-day Mexico cruise were discovered to have the virus in January after being randomly tested while docking in San Francisco, CBS affiliate KPIX reported.
Princess Cruise did not disclose how many passengers on the ship that disembarked Sunday had caught COVID-19. However, the presence of COVID-19 cases on the cruise points to how Americans aren't quite out of the coronavirus woods yet. A new BA.2 subvariant of the virus has increased cases in Arkansas, Connecticut and New York. BA.2 is about 30% more transmissible than Omicron, but does not appear to be more severe. Nationally, U.S. daily cases and hospitalizations continue to drop even as BA.2 cases spread.
Cruise operators were battered by COVID-19 outbreaks in the early days of the pandemic, with ships bearing infected passengers barred from docking in California and Florida. The Grand Princess, another Princess Cruises-owned ship, was quarantined at sea for six days after 21 people on board contracted the virus.
The number of people booking cruises plummeted over the past two years, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cautioned agains cruises regardless of a person's vaccination status. In 2020 and 2021, cruise companies collectively lost $63 billion and shed thousands of jobs, according to industry data. The Cruise Lines International Association said the industry is expected to make a full recovery by next year.