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‘Scarier Than the Cruise’: Evacuated Americans Describe Chaos, Fears on Journey Home ‘Scarier Than the Cruise’: Evacuated Americans Describe Chaos, Fears on Journey Home
(32 minutes later)
KEY WEST, Fla. — An airplane carrying hundreds of Americans who had been evacuated from the Costa Luminosa cruise ship in France idled on the tarmac in Atlanta for about five hours Friday morning because health officials learned that three passengers aboard the plane had tested positive for the coronavirus. KEY WEST, Fla. — In the end, said passengers who fled a cruise ship because of a coronavirus outbreak at sea, the evacuation and journey back to the United States was more harrowing, chaotic and frightening than their ill-fated maritime voyage.
According to two people who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak about the voyage, the test results became known while the passengers were in the air, triggering the hourslong delay that frustrated, angered and scared those aboard the plane. The French media reported that another 36 people who disembarked Thursday also tested positive. Weak and sick from no food for nearly 24 hours, several passengers fainted. Two went into respiratory distress. Others had fevers so high that they had to be separated from the rest of the travelers aboard the chartered flight. Several had severe coughs.
The passengers who did not test positive were released and told to self-quarantine. But scores of them booked flights back to their home cities, despite having been near sick people all night and on the cruise since March 5. “This was almost as much of a debacle as the cruise was,” said Jennifer Catron, a former medic who spent the entire nine-and-a-half hour flight providing medical care. At one point, she took over the in-flight announcements and begged passengers to donate spare peanuts to help revive those who were passing out from low blood sugar.
At least three other people aboard the trans-Atlantic cruise had tested positive for the illness earlier in the trip. After being turned away from Antigua and Spain, the ship docked in Marseille, France, on Thursday and the Americans, Canadians and French disembarked. The others passengers remained on the ship. “It was probably scarier than the cruise,” Ms. Catron said of the flight, which landed at about 6:30 a.m. Friday and then idled on the tarmac in Atlanta for about five hours, because health officials learned that three of the evacuees had tested positive for the coronavirus.
Their evacuation turned into an all-night odyssey, with the group sitting on a bus for hours in Marseille before boarding the flight to to Atlanta. Left without food for more than 24 hours, passengers on the plane started fainting. Several had severe coughs. The test results became known to officials during the flight, triggering the hourslong delay that frustrated, angered and scared those on the plane. The Carnival Corp. confirmed that the tests were taken before the passengers left France, but the results came while the plane was en route.
Jennifer Catron, who described herself as a wedding photographer with some medical experience, said she helped care for passengers while en route to Atlanta. She described a chaotic, dramatic flight with perhaps two dozen medical issues, some emergencies, some relatively minor. The return trip itself had been a harrowing all-night odyssey, with busloads of the passengers stuck for hours in Marseille, France, before boarding the flight to Atlanta.
“This plane is a medical disaster,” Ms. Catron said in an email during the flight. “Just got a third medical call.” The long voyage had been doomed almost from the start.
She had to help several people in respiratory distress, and had to make a collection of food to hand out to the passengers who kept fainting from low blood sugar. Another person had diarrhea. The Costa Luminosa cruise ship, owned by Carnival, left Fort Lauderdale on March 5. Its destination: Venice, Italy.
“I’ve got another guy that looks like he’s gonna fall over at any minute, I have about 60 with bronchitis like coughs that are stable,” she wrote. “This is NUTS!” Three days later, an Italian woman was evacuated in Puerto Rico because she had symptoms of the coronavirus. Her test results were delayed, and it took a week for the ship’s captain to enact strict sanitary protocols.
The group arrived at the Atlanta airport at 6:30 a.m. on Friday, but then waited on the tarmac for about five hours. Many had not eaten since lunch on Thursday, and several passengers who have diabetes fainted. Many others had severe coughs. Another man, who had been on an earlier leg of the trip, died of the disease in the Cayman Islands on Saturday. The same day, several passengers with symptoms got off the ship in the Canary Islands.
“Everyone is up in arms,” Kelea Edgar Nevis, 47, said in a text message while she waited to leave the plane in Atlanta. “We’re going to have a mutiny.” “It made our cruise actually living hell,” said Anna Smirnova, 67, from California. “People were scared, and nobody knew what to do next.”
Several passengers called 911 and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she said. The cruise was to be a grand affair with stops in Antigua, Puerto Rico, Málaga, Spain, the Canary Islands and Marseille. But Antigua and Spain would not let the 1,400 passengers disembark.
A Georgia State official, who was not authorized to speak on the record about the situation, said information from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services indicated that 359 passengers were on board the flight to Atlanta, including 70 Canadians. Since last Saturday, the passengers had been isolated in their cabins. The ship arrived on Thursday at Marseille where the Americans, Canadians and French were allowed to get off.
The official said the three people who tested positive for the coronavirus were not exhibiting symptoms, and that 13 others, who were sick on the plane, had not been tested. The French health authorities tested a few dozen people who had fevers, and the French media reported that 36 of the French people’s tests came back positive. Carnival said the French authorities have not shared that information with the company.
In the early afternoon, the passengers were being sent to a hangar for screening. State officials said they had encouraged H.H.S. to send two commercial buses to the airport to be standing by once the screening was complete. Before the test results for the Americans were known, the passengers climbed aboard buses and headed to the airport, where they sat in a parking lot for five hours. They then took a red-eye that the cruise line chartered, with nothing to eat but juice and snacks.
When asked where the passengers would be taken, the officials said, “We don’t know yet.” “It was so crowded. There were so many sick people coughing,” said Nilda Caputi, 82, who lives in Fort Lauderdale. “It was horrible. I’m old, but I’m healthy. These people were really sick and very old, in wheelchairs with a pitiful cough.”
Many of the passengers — including Ms. Catron — were roaming about in the Atlanta airport Friday. Ms. Catron posted a video from the T.G.I. Friday’s at the airport where she and other passengers were getting food. In emails sent from the plane, Ms. Catron chronicled the journey: “This plane is a medical disaster,” she said at one point, adding that one man looked about “60 with bronchitis like coughs” and like he was going to “fall over at any minute.”
Spokespersons at both the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency and the Georgia Department of Public Health declined to comment on the situation Friday. A spokesperson at the Georgia public health department referred all queries to the C.D.C. in Atlanta. The C.D.C. had no comment. “This is NUTS!” she wrote.
Earlier this month, some passengers from another cruise ship that carried people with the virus were sent to a two-week quarantine at Dobbins Air Force Base in the suburbs north of Atlanta. But that quarantine was criticized as unsanitary and problematic. Ms. Catron said the crew considered diverting the plane to Bermuda, but feared that if they did, the local hospitals would turn them away once they learned the passengers had been aboard a cruiser ship with travelers who had the coronavirus.
Ms. Catron said there was a brief debate during the flight about whether to make an emergency landing, but fears that the passengers would not be allowed to enter hospitals pushed them to continue the journey. Once the plane landed in Atlanta, Kelea Edgar Nevis, 47, texted journalists in real time whenever someone fainted.
“This was almost as much of a debacle as the cruise was,” Ms. Catron said. “It was probably scarier than the cruise.” 7:58 a.m.: Another HOUR. We’re stuffed in here like sardines and it’s hot.
By noon, most of the passengers had disembarked after getting their temperatures taken and were waiting for their luggage. Mrs. Nevis said they were instructed to self-quarantine at home. 8:09 a.m.: People are starving.
The group had been aboard the Costa Luminosa, an Italian cruise liner owned by Carnival, since March 5, when the ship left Fort Lauderdale. Its final destination was Italy, but along the way, several countries turned the ship away once it became known that at least three passengers had tested positive for the virus. 8:11 a.m.: People are starting to gather. We’re going to have a mutiny on here shortly.
The ship’s 1,400 passengers had been in isolation in their cabins since Saturday. 8:30 a.m.: Even the crew doesn’t know what we’re doing as we race across runway after runway to who knows where.
Rossella Carrara, a Costa Cruises spokeswoman, said the “disembarkation procedures were coordinated by local health authorities.” 9:20 a.m.: Everyone is up in arms.
“We strictly followed their guidelines and indications,” she said in an email. At 9:46 a.m., more than three hours after landing, Ms. Nevis wrote that the plane no longer had toilet paper or tissues. “Still no food since lunch yesterday French time,” she texted. Ms. Catron called 911.
Eventually, health officials removed the sick passengers before the others walked off the plane.
Nobody told Ms. Catron or the others, they said, that two people from Florida and one from Massachusetts had tested positive for the virus.
Kristen Nordlund, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the plane was diverted to a remote part of the Atlanta airport and that all the passengers were screened. The sick passengers were separated, she said.
“C.D.C. is working with the state of Georgia and other federal partners to determine a plan for these passengers,” she said in a statement. “Passengers with no symptoms upon arrival were given health information advising them to stay home for 14 days after returning from travel, monitor their health and practice social distancing as they continued to their final destination.”
Several passengers acknowledged that they or someone in their party had high temperatures when the C.D.C. checked. But as long as their temperatures fell after repeated tries, they were allowed to go home.
Passengers said they booked flights to California, Arizona, Florida and elsewhere across the United States and Canada.
Ms. Nordlund did not respond to questions asking whether it made sense to allow people who had been instructed to self-isolate to travel on commercial aircraft, potentially exposing them to other passengers.
“We got off the plane and you had to mark off a form asking, ‘Do you have a fever? Do you have a cough?’ I put that I had a fever and I went through secondary screening, because I was feeling terrible,” said Kelly Edge, a passenger from Miami. “I watched three-quarters of the people from the ship, and they did not do that. They marked themselves safe, got their temperatures taken and that was it.”
“They are roaming free,” she continued.
Ms. Edge said she went to an urgent care clinic afterward.
A fever is considered a telltale marker for the coronavirus, which has killed more than 10,000 people globally. (However, the man who had been aboard the Costa Luminosa and died in the Cayman Islands never had a fever, hospital officials there said.)
A Georgia state official who was not authorized to speak about the case said the three people who tested positive for the coronavirus were not exhibiting symptoms, and that 13 others, who were sick on the plane, had not been tested.
In the early afternoon, the passengers were being sent to a hangar for screening. State officials said they had encouraged the Department of Health and Human Services to send two commercial buses to the airport to be standing by once the screening was complete.
In a statement, Carnival said that its affiliate, Costa Crociere, which owns Costa Cruises, “worked closely with the French health authorities to conduct medical screenings and interview guests to prioritize those who required additional evaluation.”
Ten of the evacuated American and Canadian passengers had been tested in France, and three came back positive.
“We are working closely with C.D.C. and Georgia health officials to determine next steps,” the company said.
The company did not say why they let the people leave without medical attention, food or test results. Nor does Carnival know whether the people who disembarked in the Canary Islands tested positive.
There are still 864 crew and 719 passengers from other countries on the ship, which is off the coast of southern France. More people were disembarked Friday, but the Italians will be returned to Savona, Italy.
Ms. Catron decided that flying home to Virginia would be irresponsible, and she said she was trying to find a place to spend the night in Atlanta.
“We had so many medically unstable people who should never have been on that plane,” she said. “It was the most irresponsible thing I have ever seen.”
Richard Fausset contributed reporting from Atlanta.