Crew members with Covid on two ships

[Oceangoer2]

1 hour ago, WNcruiser said:

Try this:

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/33-crew-infected-hurtigruten-ship-160855564.html

thx!

[npcl]

3 hours ago, TeeRick said:

This a continued reminder that the virus can be almost anywhere.  People will continue to test positive and there will be outbreaks even in countries that have done a great job to date.  Outside of vaccine-acquired herd immunity in the future, this will continue to happen here and there.  In this instance I hope everybody will be OK and recover.  But it does put a bullseye back on cruising.  So to resume cruising we need well developed procedures on ships with full buy-in and agreement from ports and countries on how to handle the occasional cases all the way to full outbreaks.   It is not just masks and social distancing.   There needs to be some actual acknowledgement that positive cases are to be expected and most will be just that - positive cases.  And there will need to be a plan on ship and in port for positive cases vs. the subset of those with COVID symptoms that need medical treatment.   Or even evacuation if necessary.  

If it was one or two cases on a ship that would probably work.  If the attack rate remains high, even with social distancing and other preventive measures, as it appears to have on the Hurtigruten ship, I doubt that even agreement from the ports and acceptance that there will be some cases will work.

[npcl]

18 minutes ago, SeaHunt said:

 

Luckily for TUI - looks like some cases were caught prior to cruising on Mein Schiff 1 (good news):

 

 

Google translation

5 crew members who are scheduled to restart Mein Schiff 1 were tested positive for the corona virus in advance. According to the new process at TUI Cruises, the employees were not allowed on board to prevent the virus from spreading.

 

https://www.kreuzfahrt-aktuelles.de/news/tui-cruises-5-crewmitglieder-fuer-die-mein-schiff-1-wurden-positiv-auf-das-coronavirus-getestet/7710/

 

"Five crew members for the restart of Mein Schiff 1 were tested positive for the corona virus in advance

We already reported that Mein Schiff 1's first Blue Voyage, which took place in the period 31.07. was planned until 03.08.2020, was canceled because there were not enough crew members available.

 

In this context, it has now become known that 5 crew members who were to be deployed on Mein Schiff 1 tested positive for the corona virus. As part of a new on-boarding process that was developed due to the corona pandemic, every employee is tested in advance and may only board the ship if the test is negative.

This shows that the newly created process works and there is therefore no danger that a majority of employees on the ship will be infected and that the trips would have to be canceled".

 

TUI Cruises statement:

We had to cancel the first trip from / to Kiel because we were unable to fill certain positions on the start team of Mein Schiff 1 in good time due to global travel restrictions.

 

To restart the ships, the crew is recruited according to strict processes in accordance with the health and safety concept that has been adapted to the situation of the corona pandemic: All new crew members are tested before they board the ship. Only crew members with a negative COVID-19 test go on board and remain in isolation for 14 days without contact to the crew already on board before starting their service.

 

As part of this on-boarding process, five crew members of Mein Schiff 1 tested positive for COVID-19 and are currently in a facility on land rented by TUI Cruises. This proves that the processes introduced are working. The responsible authorities are fully informed and involved.

......

The direct German competitor AIDA Cruises has also established a similar process and there, too, 10 crew members needed for the restart were tested positive for the corona virus. 

The problem is with the number of false negative tests even with PCR (around 40% according to some studies, and varies depending upon stage of infection) if they got that many positives one would expect that there is a good chance a flase negative or two could slide through.

[C-Dragons]

1 hour ago, SeaHunt said:

 

Luckily for TUI - looks like some cases were caught prior to cruising on Mein Schiff 1 (good news):

 

 

Google translation

5 crew members who are scheduled to restart Mein Schiff 1 were tested positive for the corona virus in advance. According to the new process at TUI Cruises, the employees were not allowed on board to prevent the virus from spreading.

 

https://www.kreuzfahrt-aktuelles.de/news/tui-cruises-5-crewmitglieder-fuer-die-mein-schiff-1-wurden-positiv-auf-das-coronavirus-getestet/7710/

 

"Five crew members for the restart of Mein Schiff 1 were tested positive for the corona virus in advance

We already reported that Mein Schiff 1's first Blue Voyage, which took place in the period 31.07. was planned until 03.08.2020, was canceled because there were not enough crew members available.

 

In this context, it has now become known that 5 crew members who were to be deployed on Mein Schiff 1 tested positive for the corona virus. As part of a new on-boarding process that was developed due to the corona pandemic, every employee is tested in advance and may only board the ship if the test is negative.

This shows that the newly created process works and there is therefore no danger that a majority of employees on the ship will be infected and that the trips would have to be canceled".

Thanks for posting this. I am happy to see the way that the cruise line handled the situation.

[SeaHunt]

12 hours ago, BigAl94 said:

This update is worth translating - it doesn't make good reading https://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/i/2GLwVR/hurtigruten-ble-varslet-om-passasjer-med-smitte-etter-forrige-tur-mente-det-ikke-var-grunn-til-bekymring?fbclid=IwAR1SllxGjIqkHEaI2GacFEL_2nlBchI5lF9B7vFmZmiePb3feKsO-00Q748

 

 

4 hours ago, Baron Barracuda said:

Alright, they had several sick crew.  Didn't know for sure it was covid 

 

But you might look again at this post from @BigAl94 with the article regarding Hurtigruten inaction after being notified of a prior positive passenger case 🙄 

 

In case some missed it or didn't translate it here it is with google translate:

 

"Hurtigruten was notified of passengers with infection after the previous trip - thought there was no cause for concern"

 

On Wednesday, a passenger was confirmed infected after traveling on the MS "Roald Amundsen" last week. The municipal superior in Vesterålen says the informed Hurtigruten the same day.

 

This is confirmed by Ingebjørn Bleidvin, the municipal chief in Hadsel in Vesterålen.

 

- On Wednesday we received a positive patient, who had been on the Hurtigruten.

- What did you do then?

- Then we did an ordinary infection detection, put the patient in isolation and close contacts in quarantine. As the patient had stayed on the MS «Roald Amundsen» for most of the incubation period, we contacted Hurtigruten and FHI, says the municipal chief and adds:

 

- Hurtigruten was notified of the infection on Wednesday.

 

On Friday, it was confirmed that four employees on board the Hurtigruten ship MS "Roald Amundsen" have tested positive for covid-19 and are hospitalized. All passengers and crew must be quarantined .

 

On the same day, Hurtigruten reports that they are working to contact those who sailed with the ship between 17 and 24 July, which the positive patient in Vesterålen did.

 

In addition to informing Hurtigruten about the case, Vesterålen municipality sent out a press release on Wednesday stating that there was a case of infection in the municipality, and that the person had been "infected on a domestic trip".

 

Nevertheless, Hurtigruten says on Friday night that they had no suspicion of corona infection on board the MS "Roald Amundsen" before the passengers were released.

 

The municipal chief, on the other hand, says that their recommendation to Hurtigruten was to notify all passengers on Wednesday, the same day.

 

- However, we have no authority to impose any measures on them, and assumed that they followed it up according to their own guidelines.

 

There must have been two trips with the ship this summer. One was finished last Friday, and the other today. The infected patient in Vesterålen was on the first trip, from 17-24 July.

 

Hurtigruten states that there were 209 passengers on the first voyage, and 177 on the second. The crew has consisted of 160 people on both voyages.

 

The patient developed symptoms on Sunday, two days after the trip was over. According to Bleidvin, municipal chief physician, there is a theoretical possibility that he was infected just before or immediately after the trip, but highly theoretically. The incubation period is between one and 14 days, so it is natural to take into account that the infection occurred the week the passenger was on board, Bleidvin believes.

 

- Therefore, we informed Hurtigruten that we have a patient who has been on board, who has now tested positive.

This week was a new trip with the ship.

 

- We communicated this clearly, to several people in Hurtigruten, and to FHI.

 

The municipal superintendent tells VG that they contacted at least four people in Hurtigruten and informed about the infection.

 

Communications manager Rune Thomas Ege confirms to VG that they were contacted on Wednesday.

 

- We were contacted on Wednesday with information about a guest who had tested positive several days after he left the ship in Tromsø, writes communications manager Rune Thomas Ege in an e-mail.

 

In the time since, he worked actively with infection detection together with the municipal doctor, infection control authorities, health personnel and experts in infection control both on land and on board the ship.

 

Ege writes that no other guests or crew on the two sailings had reported symptoms or illness. Others in the guest's travel companion have also tested negative after they returned home from the trip with Hurtigruten.

 

- Therefore, it was originally concluded that it was most likely that the guest was not infected on board. With the new information that has arrived today, we have now chosen to contact all guests on the last two sailings.

 

- Together with the authorities, we are now actively working to contact the guests on the last two trips with MS «Roald Amundsen», and contribute to the infection tracing in every conceivable way. We have also set up our own numbers for guests to contact us at. We work as quickly and efficiently as we can, and will do everything we can to follow up both guests and our employees as well as possible.

 

Several passengers on board the MS "Roald Amundsen" have reacted to a lack of information from Hurtigruten.

 

On Friday, both Hurtigruten and the municipal chief in Tromsø announced that everyone on board should have received an SMS or email. Several told VG that they have not received it.

 

Now Hurtigruten has found out why:

- A technical error led to not everyone getting it until several hours later. It seems that around 30 percent of the text messages did not arrive as they should. A number of e-mails also did not arrive when they should, says communications manager Rune Thomas Ege to VG.

 

This explains why several passengers received an email from Hurtigruten in the 18-19 period stating that they could travel home, while the municipality was clear throughout the day that no one should travel anywhere.

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/i/2GLwVR/hurtigruten-ble-varslet-om-passasjer-med-smitte-etter-forrige-tur-mente-det-ikke-var-grunn-til-bekymring

 

 

BTW another article shows 32 of the 34 confirmed cases are from the Philippines. The three others are Norwegian, French and German nationalities. (Chart above shows 36 positive so the math is off)

https://www.mynewsdesk.com/no/hurtigruten/pressreleases/33-hurtigruten-crew-members-tested-positive-for-covid-19-3024215

[cangelmd]

7 hours ago, TeeRick said:

This a continued reminder that the virus can be almost anywhere.  People will continue to test positive and there will be outbreaks even in countries that have done a great job to date.  Outside of vaccine-acquired herd immunity in the future, this will continue to happen here and there.  In this instance I hope everybody will be OK and recover.  But it does put a bullseye back on cruising.  So to resume cruising we need well developed procedures on ships with full buy-in and agreement from ports and countries on how to handle the occasional cases all the way to full outbreaks.   It is not just masks and social distancing.   There needs to be some actual acknowledgement that positive cases are to be expected and most will be just that - positive cases.  And there will need to be a plan on ship and in port for positive cases vs. the subset of those with COVID symptoms that need medical treatment.   Or even evacuation if necessary.  

Amen.

 

We have been so separated from infectious diseases that have no cures or vaccines (yeah I know HIV, I helped care for one of the first HIV patients at UAB in 1984, too long ago and not an aerosol virus), we’ve totally lost the sense of perspective and what risk is reasonable in the face of infectious disease. We tend toward extremes. And it doesn’t help that what we know changes rapidly.

[markeb]

50 minutes ago, cangelmd said:

Amen.

 

We have been so separated from infectious diseases that have no cures or vaccines (yeah I know HIV, I helped care for one of the first HIV patients at UAB in 1984, too long ago and not an aerosol virus), we’ve totally lost the sense of perspective and what risk is reasonable in the face of infectious disease. We tend toward extremes. And it doesn’t help that what we know changes rapidly.

 

"The Coming Plague" had just been released about the time I was starting my MPH program in 1995, and the big Ebola outbreak around Kikwit had just more or less been controlled. Garrett basically began her book in the vaccine/DDT/antimalarial/antibiotic early '60's when her argument was the world believed it had conquered infectious disease. Medicine and epidemiology in particular were going to move on to conquering heart disease and cancer. We had this ID stuff covered!

 

The first vignette if I recall is the sudden presentation of woman in Africa who is ultimately discovered to have Lassa, which kills her and most of the hospital staff...

 

From there it's essentially 40 years of viral hemorrhagic fevers, multi-drug resistant TB, building to the strange presentation of men in the Bay Area with Kaposi's Sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia in the late '70's and early 80's.

 

I would propose that one of the reasons we have no real perspective on reasonable risk here is that we are about 8-9 months into a pandemic, and the world is (rightly, I'd argue) trying to solve the problem rather than understand it. And, it's respiratory spread with an R0 somewhere in the low 2's, so it definitely transmits. Although everyone talks about the "1918 Influenza Pandemic", it lasted for between 2-3 years, and the only real control measures were isolation and quarantine. And wearing masks...

 

Better topic for some some other board, but yeah.

[chipmaster]

9 hours ago, TeeRick said:

This a continued reminder that the virus can be almost anywhere.  People will continue to test positive and there will be outbreaks even in countries that have done a great job to date.  Outside of vaccine-acquired herd immunity in the future, this will continue to happen here and there.  In this instance I hope everybody will be OK and recover.  But it does put a bullseye back on cruising.  So to resume cruising we need well developed procedures on ships with full buy-in and agreement from ports and countries on how to handle the occasional cases all the way to full outbreaks.   It is not just masks and social distancing.   There needs to be some actual acknowledgement that positive cases are to be expected and most will be just that - positive cases.  And there will need to be a plan on ship and in port for positive cases vs. the subset of those with COVID symptoms that need medical treatment.   Or even evacuation if necessary.  

 

This says cruising is dead for sure in 2020 and most likely most of 2021 for multiple reasons

 

1) this thing is highly contagious

2) it is everywhere with some countries like the US in wildfire mode and many other countries seeing reoccurances

3) No test can detect the just infected so between 1 and 2 there is going to be some measurable number of people who just got it.

 

So with 3) even if you got high efficacy test you won't detect it all, not everyone will have vaccine nor immunity so any large gathering that isolates say together eating, theater, pool, elevator someone who has it will give it to everyone, viola another Diamond Princess or ****    

 

 

[npcl]

2 hours ago, cangelmd said:

Amen.

 

We have been so separated from infectious diseases that have no cures or vaccines (yeah I know HIV, I helped care for one of the first HIV patients at UAB in 1984, too long ago and not an aerosol virus), we’ve totally lost the sense of perspective and what risk is reasonable in the face of infectious disease. We tend toward extremes. And it doesn’t help that what we know changes rapidly.

Considering the rate at which antibiotics are becoming ineffective, the difficulty in finding new ones, and the limited amount of funding  new research in the area (antibiotics are like vaccines in that they are needed, but not very profitable in general.  Create a new antibiotic and its gets little use because it is saved for cases resistant to existing antibiotics) we will see more cases of resistant disease in the future.

[TeeRick]

Some perspective from history.  Going back to the first appearance of modern Homo Sapiens on the planet (300,000 years) our species survived and thrived for all of that time even before the first antbiotic penicillin was discovered in 1928.  The first widely used anti-viral drug was acyclovir and it was available in 1982.   Let's go to Edward Jenner who started vaccine science with cowpox in 1798 although a true smallpox vaccine came much later.  About 3 in 10 people contacting smallpox died over many centuries.  So truly modern medicine treatments and modern vaccines only began to emerge 100 years ago.  Population of the planet in 1900 was 1.6 Billion.  Population today is 7.8 Billion.  So to imagine the discovery of SARS-CoV-2 about 8 months ago and already have vaccines in Phase 3 trials for potential approval and availability by year end is just remarkable.  Modern medicine, drug and vaccine development, epidemiology, genetics, immunology- they got our backs!  Let's just have a wee bit of patience.  With all of the previous plagues affecting humankind even without modern medicine the world survived them.

[PTC DAWG]

21 hours ago, ECCruise said:

I am not sure how that is germane. 

Asymptomatic can infect others.

Presymptomatic can infect others.

 

The cruise industry, I am afraid, is in even more trouble than we have thought.  There were extensive preparations for these first sailings and look what happened.

Scared people should stay home...

[ECCruise]

57 minutes ago, PTC DAWG said:

Scared people should stay home...

Enjoy not sailing for the next year or so because of all the "scared people" who will stay home until this thing gets fleshed out.

 

Meanwhile, the US continues to refuse to get their arms around this virus.  "Just the flu."  "No worse than the common cold" still dominates a lot of the discussion in Flat Earth America. Ⓡ

[ABoatNerd]

Just now - in Australia, Melbourne and area just announced a state of emergency and is in lock down.