More than 250 passengers and crew members on board a British cruise ship which was en route to Canada were sickened by the gastrointestinal condition norovirus, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
The cruise ship, the Balmoral, was docked at the Portland Harbor in Portland, Maine, over the weekend and is the first of 76 cruise ships that are expected to visit the city within the year.
The Balmoral, operated by Fred Olsen Cruises, had 919 passengers on board, and according to the CDC, 252 - 27 percent - of them have gotten sick. In addition, the agency says eight of the 520 crew members on board have also been infected.
The cruise ship left Southampton, England on April 16 for a 34-day "Old England to New England" cruise, making stops in Portugal and Bermuda before making its first stop in the U.S. at Norfolk, Va., last month.
At the time, CDC officials reported that 153 passengers and six crew members had been sickened by the norovirus. Health officials and an epidemiologist boarded the ship when it arrived in Baltimore on April 30 to assess the outbreak and the response. Specimens collected by the CDC during that check confirmed the existence of norovirus.
Prior to the health check, the cruise line put out a press release on April 29 saying that "a gastro-enteritis type illness has affected a number of guests."
When the Balmoral docked at Portland this weekend, local media reported witnesses seeing surfaces constantly being wiped down, which is consistent with the new procedures that the CDC said the cruise line has in place.
In a statement, the said CDC said the cruise line has taken actions in response to the outbreak, including increasing cleaning and disinfection procedures, collecting stool specimens from passengers, daily reporting of illness and dispatching public health and sanitation managers from the cruise line's corporate office to oversee sanitation procedures.
The Balmoral's next stop is St. John, New Brunswick, Canada, and it is expected to reach port sometime on Monday. The cruise ship can hold up to 1,350 passengers and is the largest and newest ship in the cruise line's fleet.
