A total of 89 passengers and two crew members on board Royal Caribbean’s Radiance of the Seas cruise ship have become ill with an unknown illness, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It said the predominant symptoms have been diarrhea and vomiting.
This outbreak was reported to the CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Program (VSP) Tuesday. Per the CDC the voyage was scheduled to run from this Sunday through Feb. 8. Overall, there are 2,164 passengers reportedly aboard the ship, so the infected group so far makes up 4.1% of that population. There are also 910 crew members and the two infected make up only 0.2% of that population.
In response to the outbreak, Royal Caribbean International and the crew aboard the ship reported that they: increased cleaning and disinfection procedures according to their outbreak prevention and response plan, collected stool specimens from gastrointestinal illness cases for testing, isolated ill passengers and crew and consulted with VSP about sanitation cleaning procedures and reporting ill cases.
“VSP is remotely monitoring the situation, including review of the ship's outbreak response and sanitation procedures,” said the CDC. It also offered tips for cruise passengers on how to protect themselves.
So far, the illness impacting people aboard the Radiance of the Seas is unknown and the CDC said that samples are pending confirmatory testing. According to the CDC, gastrointestinal (GI) illness reporting is important to prevent the spread of illness. Often norovirus is a cause of GI illness outbreaks on cruise ships, but not always. For example, a recent outbreak in the Coral Princess cruise was caused by norovirus, while an outbreak on the Radiance last September was caused by salmonella.
“Finding the agent that caused an outbreak (causative agent) can take time,” said the CDC.