Infinity Illness - Possible Delays on April 13

[Christine Frances]

For those who cannot sanitize they should enforce washing with warm soap and water for at least 20 seconds. Actually they should enforce this always and just recommend sanitizer.

 

Enforce how:confused: I always wash with soap and water because the special commercial grade Purell hand sanitizer leaves my hands swollen, red and cracked. But enforcement.........

[Christine Frances]

I have never had Noro but have had the "Cruise Crud" Upper Respiratory Infection ie flu/bronchitis etc twice. The airborne URI is much harder to avoid as anyone coughing 5-10 ft from you can infect you. I would have preferred Noro as it would have been over with in 48 hrs but the URI lasted for weeks.

[vmarq]

Another interesting thing I observed while in Cabo San Lucas. Since this was a tender port, I saw a crew member enter each one of the tenders when they emptied, and spray it down with some type of spray gun. I think Celebrity did a good job based on the circumstances. It is interesting that each of the ships coming into San Diego with Noro had done the Panama Canal. I believe the virus was brought on the ship after people went on their excursions. Let's be honest, these cruise ports in South America are not the cleanest.

[1pinehurst]

We just got off the Infinity in San Diego yesterday (Monday). Many passengers and crew were sick with Norovirus symptoms and hacking coughts. One crew member at breakfast service put his down and said I don't feel good. Baggage handlers (porters) on the pier were told to wear gloves. We do feel sorry and concerned for the boarding passengers.

[Northern Aurora]

We boarded the Infinity on February 15th for the Antarctic cruise, and then stayed on for the March 1st and March 15th cruses, disembarking in Ft. Lauderdale on March 29th. So we were on the same cruise as "floridatraverlersforlife) in addition to the two prior ones.

 

The colds, coughing and hacking started on the Antaractic cruise, but neither my husband nor I caught it until the second leg. Fortunately we had very mild cases which didn't last much longer than 72 hours. I am not sure I would agree with the statement which another passenger told "foridatravelersforlife" that the colds were worse on the Buenos Aires to Valparaiso leg because the coughing and hacking was so extreme on both legs that it was hard to ascertain which cruise had more. We have completed more than twenty cruises and these last cruises had more coughing and hacking than I've ever heard. It was amazing.

 

During the March 1st cruise it was apparent that the crew was concerned about noro and, Captain Nickolas was making statements regarding the importance of hand washing during his daily address to the ship. We also observed enhanced cleaning. On March 12th Captain Nickolas made a statement to the effect that some people were reporting to the medical facility with with symptoms of gastrointestinal illness, and that passengers would be seeing more enhanced cleaning. Several letters were also included in the Celebrity Today recommending hand washing.

 

Despite this, I observed incomplete hand washing by other passengers in the public restrooms, and believe I heard one woman leaving a public restroom, after using it, and not washing her hands at all (i.e. I heard no water running in a sink). Given some of the passenger behavior I suspect that passengers deserve more than 60% of the blame for the situation. I reached the point that I was starting to make comments, in a light-hearted manner, in the bathroom that there is no extra charge for soap when I saw someone simply rinsing their hands with water.

 

Given both the passenger behavior and enhanced cleaning I am not surprised at what has happened. Quite frankly we were expecting the actions described by vmarq to be implemented on our set of cruises.

[SPacificbound]

We were on Infinity from 02/15/15 through 03/29/2015. From day one there were lots of people with some sort of upper respiratory infection.

 

This was three- two week cruises, so there was a turnover of passengers.

 

Cruise two there were supposed to be about 500 B2B carried over to cruise three.

 

Early on we brought attention to the sanitizer stations being empty or not working. We complained about this several times, both verbal and written.

There was also not a person at the entrance to Oceanview Cafe to remind people, but if they aren't working or empty that wouldn't help anyway.

 

There was also some noro based upon the captains announcements.

 

We were very diligent and managed to make it all the way through with no illness.

 

When you have sailaway with people hacking their lungs out, there is definitely a problem that is going to spread and spread some more.

[lyndarra]

We have just arrived home after having completed the panama cruise on Infinity. There were about 30 fellows Aussies on board and, to my knowledge, none of them came down with illness. Contrary to some reports above I noted very little coughing or hacking. I was surprised at how little there was compeared to some other recent cruises we've done.

Also, as mentioned, the staff were working very hard at cleaning and sanitising but it should be remebered that hand sanitisers has little or no effect on noro as it is a virus not bacteria. Hand sanitising can be effective against e coli and other bacteria. Chlorine is effective against noro and a few days from the end of the cruise we returned to our cabin to find it smelling strongly of chlorine. We also observed all the cabin door handles being washed. Anyways, there was something making some people sick. We thoroughly enjoyed our cruise.