How to Avoid Getting Norovirus on Cruise Ships

Table Of Content

• Outbreaks 2012 reports
• More from CBS News
• Popular Searches
• Norovirus Outbreaks on Cruise Ships: How to Avoid Getting Sick on Vacation
• COVID, Bird Flu, Monkeypox – A Virologist Explains the Surge of Virus Outbreaks Around the World
• These are the cruise ships with the best — and worst — sanitation scores so far this year
• CDC cruise ship Norovirus reports

The virus causes your stomach or intestines or both to get inflamed (acute gastroenteritis). This leads you to have stomach pain, nausea, and diarrhea and to throw up. Therefore, the CDC has reports from every cruise vessel, on just about every cruise, even if there was no illness.

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Outbreaks 2012 reports

According to Mayo Clinic, norovirus most often spreads in closed and crowded environments, such as hospitals, nursing homes, child care centers, schools and cruise ships. Cruise ships are required to report gastrointestinal illness cases to the CDC before arriving from a foreign port, or when 2% of the crew and passengers have the illness. Norovirus is highly contagious and can spread directly through sick people and contaminated surfaces, food, or drinks. Passengers sensitive to nausea or motion sickness should consult their doctors for medical recommendations prior to departure.

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It is important to continue washing your hands often even after you feel better. There is no specific medicine to treat people with norovirus illness. To see how your specific cruise line performed on its VSP inspections, you can visit the CDC website and search their portal. This site also lists any corrective actions taken to remedy any issues. She noted that hand sanitizers do not work well against norovirus and that they are not a substitute for handwashing.

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You can find a list of the most recent inspection scores and lists of violations for each ship on the VSP website.

Outbreaks 2016 reports

Even though you may be tempted to conceal your illness, you would be doing a great disservice to the other passengers and the crew on the cruise by keeping it a secret. Typically, norovirus lasts for one to three days, though you can spread the illness for a few days after. While each virus has a different ability to transmit, norovirus is a highly transmissible infection. According to the CDC, each person who is infected with norovirus sheds billions of viral particles.

Among those are schools, hospitals, nursing homes, dormitories, prisons, big resorts, bigger passenger ships (including cruise ferries). Norovirus is often branded as "cruise ship virus" simply because on ships health officials are required to report every gastrointestinal illness incident. This means Norovirus outbreaks are reported more quickly on ships than on land. Just for comparison, the virus can afflict as many as 3000 people per day in only one big city, which is about the passenger capacity of a typical modern cruiser.

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That said, the chances of catching the bug on a cruise ship aren’t particularly high. According to the Cruise Lines Industry Association, the risk each year of getting laboratory-confirmed norovirus during a ship outbreak is about 1 in 5,500. Over half of all cases originate in long-term health care facilities, according to the CDC, while less than 1 percent of all norovirus cases come from cruise ships. Norovirus — a common and contagious virus that causes vomiting and diarrhea — is on the rise throughout the United States, especially on cruise ships. Norovirus cases aboard cruise ships have spiked for the first time in over 10 years, and experts believe more lenient travel restrictions and an increase in cruise passengers following the Covid pandemic are to blame.

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“While many viruses and illnesses cause a fever, norovirus does not always cause one,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee. It's important to wash your hands with soap and clean water frequently, but especially after using the bathroom or changing diapers, before eating and before touching your face. As 95 of the world's top 100 largest megapolises are port cities, "hospital ships" could provide healthcare very quickly and more efficiently to large numbers of people. In February 2020, the shipowner cruise company Lindblad Expeditions announced the "Premium Purity" program with a shipwide cleaning system based on ACT CleanCoat technology. The innovative ship cleaning process is based on photocatalytic antibacterial spray that when activated by light kills viruses, bacteria, airborne microbes, mould.

CDC cruise ship Norovirus reports

In early June, reports circulated that more than 175 people became sick with norovirus on a Celebrity Cruise en route to Bermuda. Find more information about gastrointestinal illness outbreaks on land and at sea. The exact number of cases needed for each alert level varies by cruise ship. It may be a certain number of cases or a certain percentage of passengers and crew on the ship.

What causes Norovirus on cruise vessels is mainly contaminated food/water. When it comes to ships, it spreads mostly through physical contact with sick people or handling contaminated objects. This includes sharing food/utensils and poor hygiene (not washing hands after bathroom use).

Both emergency and basic care are available on the ship 24 hours a day. The navies of USA, UK, Australia, China, France, Italy, Spain, Argentina, and Japan have some classes of military ships fitted with onboard hospitals. In January 2016, the CDC issued travel guidance on affected countries and suggested using enhanced precautions and even postponing travel. Similar travel warnings were issued by other health agencies and governments.

Norovirus is an illness that tends to have a wintertime seasonality with an uptake usually around February. According to the Cruise Lines International Association, cruise passenger volume is estimated to reach 106% of 2019 levels this year, with 31.5 million passengers expected to set sail. Norovirus infects between 19 million and 21 million Americans annually, the CDC reports. The most recent occurred in June on a Viking Cruises ship from Iceland that docked in New York, where 110 passengers and eight crew members fell ill. They are located on upper decks and include cabins for families, couples and single cabins.