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Cruise ship carrying woman monitored for Ebola returns to Texas Tourists back in Texas from cruise ship carrying woman monitored for Ebola
(about 2 hours later)
A cruise ship carrying a Dallas healthcare worker who was being monitored for Ebola returned to port on Sunday after an eventful seven-day trip in which passengers had their vacations briefly disrupted with an infectious disease scare. Holidaymakers often feel regret at the end of a vacation, but the prevailing sentiment was more like relief among many of the passengers who stepped off the Carnival Magic after an Ebola scare prompted a tense climax to their cruise.
A lab supervisor who handled a specimen from Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man who died from Ebola in Dallas on 8 October, showed no symptoms during the cruise but self-quarantined out of caution. Carnival Cruise Lines told passengers the unidentified woman was tested for Ebola but the results were negative. The ship docked as normal in Galveston early on Sunday after a seven-day journey through the Gulf of Mexico. But the past few days were anything but ordinary for those on board, especially for one couple.
Petty officer Andy Kendrick told the Associated Press a Coast Guard crew flew in a helicopter on Saturday to meet the Carnival Magic and retrieved a blood sample from the woman. He said the blood sample was taken to a state lab in Austin for processing. That test was confirmed as a negative on Sunday. A lab worker from the Dallas hospital who may have handled specimens collected from the first person to be given a diagnosis of Ebola in the US, Thomas Eric Duncan, went into voluntary quarantine in her cabin along with her husband last Wednesday, after the cruise operator was told by federal authorities that she was on board and tighter travel protocols were being introduced.
Vicky Rey, vice-president of guest care for Carnival Cruise Lines, said the woman and her husband drove themselves home after arriving in Galveston early on Sunday, but offered no further details. On Sunday, one woman who had just disembarked blamed the media for the sense of unease that subsequently enveloped the cruise.
The Ebola scare added some drama to the trip for hundreds of passengers. “Y’all blew it out of proportion,” said the woman, who refused to give her name. “All you had to do is stay out of it and there wouldn’t have been a problem but y’all blew it out of proportion. My family were scared to death because they were watching the news.”
They learned through a public address announcement that one of the passengers was being monitored for Ebola. They watched developments about the Ebola outbreak and their ship on the news. The boat was not allowed to dock in Cozumel, depriving passengers of one of the top port destinations. Travellers snapped pictures of a Coast Guard helicopter as it landed to get a blood sample from the passenger. The lab worker had already been self-monitoring, taking her temperature daily for fever signs, but she isolated herself and stepped up her health checks after concern grew last week that the hospital’s procedures had been inadequate and news broke that the second nurse to test positive for the virus had taken a commercial flight the day before developing a high fever.
“We weren’t worried. We ended up just hanging out and enjoying the rest of the trip,” said Meredith Brooks, a Houston banker who was on her honeymoon. The Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) issued updated air travel guidelines last week.
State department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that when the woman left the US on the cruise ship from Galveston on 12 October, health officials were requiring only self-monitoring. Officials stepped up their response while the cruise was under way and two nurses at the hospital which treated Duncan were diagnosed with Ebola. When the Magic’s passengers heard an on-board announcement explaining the woman’s situation, it set them wondering who she was, where she was and whether they had bumped into her. There were 4,100 passengers and 1,400 crew, conjuring nightmare worst-case scenarios of mass infection in a confined space.
Carnival Cruise Lines said in a statement that the woman was “not deemed to be a risk to any guests or crew”. Despite officials emphasising that the woman was very low-risk and was not symptomatic, and so not contagious, some passengers grew worried and the ship’s itinerary was forcibly altered. The Belize government refused State Department entreaties to let the couple disembark in the country so they could be flown home, while Mexican authorities in Cozumel did not allow the ship to dock for a scheduled daylong stop.
“We are in close contact with the CDC, and at this time it has been determined that the appropriate course of action is to simply keep the guest in isolation on board,” the statement said, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Passengers exiting on Sunday were given a two-sided A4 sheet with facts about Ebola taken from the CDC website and “seven things to know” about the passenger. It said that her risk period of 21 days after potential exposure would be over on Monday, when if she continued to show no symptoms she would not require active monitoring.
The ship was refused clearance to dock in Cozumel, Mexico on Friday, a day after Belize refused to let the passenger leave the vessel. There were no restrictions placed on other passengers aboard the ship, officials said. “While the cruise was ongoing, your fellow passenger’s requirements for monitoring their health changed after a fellow hospital employee became ill with Ebola and extra cautions were extended,” the sheet said. “Currently, public health officials are not recommending you take any additional actions. We apologise for the disruption this has caused to your vacation.”
Passenger James Dinkley of Thelma, Texas, took the cruise to celebrate his one-year wedding anniversary with his wife. He said there was some initial confusion and agitation after they learned of the situation, were delayed in Belize for several hours and had the Cozumel visit cancelled. But he said the cruise line kept everyone informed with regular updates after that. With the threat so small, the main effect of the incident has been to underline how the virus has disproportionately spread fear among the public. It also demonstrates the considerable efforts government officials and transport companies are making to prevent panic in the wake of serious missteps in Dallas related to Duncan and the subsequent infections of two nurses who treated him before he died.
“There was a lot of confusion, especially when they canceled our Cozumel day,” he said. Carnival offered each passenger $200 in ship account credit in compensation and a discount on their next cruise.
Carnival gave passengers credit for the missed Cozumel leg. “We had a blast,” said Brett Reich, who was getting on a shuttle bus in front of the ship as he prepared to return home to Tulsa, Oklahoma, with his family. “For us, when they said, ‘We’re sorry we’re going to cancel this call, we’re going to give you guys this much money and a discount on the next cruise,’ we were like, ‘Yes! Yes! We just got $800 plus we’re getting a discount on a cruise we’re already going to book anyway.’ So we were thrilled.
“There are going to be people who are going to come through here who are going to be very upset. They’re at Guest Services, they’re very upset. A guy was slamming his hand on the desk … but for us, we were thrilled.”A couple in line for a bus, who declined to give their names, were less delighted. “They treated us well,” the man said. “Just not a good way to start our first cruise.”
“And our last,” his partner added.
Luggage in hand, a husband and wife were preparing to make the long trip home to Artesia, New Mexico. They praised the way the ship’s authorities handled the situation. The company has recent experience in crisis management following events in Feburary 2013, when the Carnival Triumph was adrift for days in the Gulf of Mexico, after an engine fire knocked out power and passengers claimed that human waste was piled in bags outside cabins when toilets stopped working.“You’re kind of a little on edge. You try not to be but, yeah, it was a little nerve-racking,” said Vicky Olivas, 45. She said that the news made some people more cautious around strangers and created an atmosphere of uncertainty.
“We had no worries about it, them guys had everything under control,” said Jaime Olivas, 47. “They had them poor guys working and women cleaning every single inch of that boat, sanitising from top to bottom. They did an awesome job, really, the guys and workers.”
He blamed the woman for taking the cruise in the first place. “People like her shouldn’t be on that boat at all,” he said. “If I had that, I would stay at home or in the hospital until I’m 100% clear. Why am I going to get other people infected with that, you know? I ain’t going to bring that on a cruise.”
Jim Berra, a Carnival senior vice-president, said US officials had flown to the ship by helicopter on Saturday to collect a blood sample from the woman, which had proved negative. Berra said the woman was the first passenger to disembark after the ship arrived in Galveston, shortly before 5am Central Time. She was escorted off by local officials who drove her to a parking lot.
“She walked off the gangway, got into a car, drove to her car, then is driving back to Dallas with her husband,” he said.
The ship is scheduled to depart later on Sunday for a voyage to Jamaica, Grand Cayman and Cozumel, he said, but the woman’s cabin will not be used this week.
“We took it out of service for this cruise but we’re going to do a complete sanitisation of that,” he said.
“We technically wouldn’t need to do anything more with the vessel than we would normally need to do to turn the ship around for its next cruise but to be very cautious and provide additional peace of mind for our guests we’re doing a full sanitation of the ship so we brought in industrial foggers, we put disinfecting agent into it that fogs all the public areas and then we’ll wipe down all the surface areas – everything from doorknobs, guardrails, casino chips.”
Berra said that even before the cruise Carnival had a screening process in place to identify potential Ebola carriers, in the form of a questionnaire which asked passengers if they had visited the affected countries in west Africa or come into contact with someone who had. Anyone who answered yes would be subjected to additional screening by a medical professional.
“That screening has now been expanded to include, ‘Have you been potentially exposed to the Ebola virus?’,” Berra said. “But we’ve followed the rules in terms of what was established in terms of protocols with CDCand other health organisations. At the time she was completely free and clear to sail.”
Galveston, a port and resort city on an island 50 miles from Houston, had a more concrete Ebola encounter earlier this weekend. The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in the city is home to the National Biocontainment Training Center; state officials have asked UTMB to be prepared to dispose of Ebola-related waste and provide clinical care for Ebola patients if necessary.
The Galveston Daily News reported that on Saturday a truck with 100 barrels of medical waste from the Texas Health Presbyterian hospital in Dallas, including items such as blankets and gloves that came into contact with Duncan, arrived to be incinerated only a mile from the wharf where passengers stepped off the hulking white ship a day later.
They were greeted by family, taxis, shuttle buses and a throng of reporters and cameras.