Early in 2020, in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the disease spread to a number of cruise ships, with the nature of such shipsincluding crowded semi-enclosed areas, increased exposure to new environments, and limited medical resourcescontributing to the heightened risk and rapid spread of the disease.
The British-registered was the first cruise ship to have a major outbreak on board, with the ship quarantined at Yokohama from 4 February 2020 for about a month. Of 3711 passengers and crew, around 700 people became infected and 9 people died. With that, many cruise lines suspended their operations to mitigate the spread of the pandemic and were replaced by "cruises to nowhere" that had no stops.
By June 2020, over 40 cruise ships had confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 on board. The last cruise ship with passengers aboard during the first wave of the pandemic, , docked at its home port with its last eight passengers on 8 June 2020. In addition, over 40,000 crew members still remained on cruise ships, some in isolation, in mid-June 2020. Many could not be repatriated because cruise lines refused to cover the cost, and because countries had different and changing rules. The condition was stressful to many of those stranded; multiple suicides were reported.
Domestic UK cruises, confined to ports of call in the British Isles, began to resume in May 2021. United States cruises restarted in June 2021.
Summary of confirmed cases on board
Note: The section symbol ('§') left of the ship name in the table below links to the appropriate section on this page, if it exists.
+ Cruise ship incidents with confirmed positive cases on board § Ship Crew People Tests Cases Dead Date Location Owner/operator Dock Country § 1871 1820 3691 7+5 0 5 February 2020 Kai Tak Cruise Tml. China Dream Cruises § Diamond Princess (details) 2666 1045 3711 3618 712 14
4 February 2020 Port of Yokohama Japan Princess Cruises § 781 747 1528 1 0 13 February 2020 Sihanoukville Cambodia Holland America § (details) 2422 1111 3533 1103 122 7 9 March 2020 Port of Oakland USA Princess Cruises § A Sara 101 70 171 45 7 March 2020 Luxor Egypt Extension Group § 2309 945±15 2 near Miami USA Costa Cruises § 682 38 1063 5 17 March 2020 Port of Mariel Cuba FOCL § 1370 410 1780 36 3 19 March 2020 Marseille-Fos Port France Costa Cruises 1 15 March 2020 Gulfport USA § 111 120 231 14 March 2020 Castro Chile Silversea Cruises § 318 291 609 2 1 12 March 2020 Recife Port Brazil Silversea Cruises § 1 NCL § 3 1 14 March 2020 Port Canaveral USA NCL § 201 none Sydney Harbour Australia Celebrity Cruises § ~2700 1100 ≥852 28 19 March 2020 Sydney Harbour Australia Princess Cruises § MSC Bellissima 6 § ~3000 79 1 18 March 2020 Sydney Harbour Australia Royal Caribbean § 39 2 18 March 2020 Sydney Harbour Australia Royal Caribbean § 726 1 25 March 2020 Civitavecchia Italy Costa Cruises 1 none Bridgetown Barbados Marella Cruises 30 March near Progreso Mexico § 800 500 1300 89 4 27 March Fremantle Harbour Australia Phoenix Reisen 8 403 411 24 April near Jakarta Indonesia Carnival Freedom 0 1 none Gulfport USA § 0 1407 1407 1444 224 none C. de l'Atlantique France C. de l'Atlantique 2 none near Tampa USA § 1009 13 1 near Miami USA Costa Cruises § MSC Splendida 1 § 1 § 1243 586 1829 11 4 2/3 April 2020 Port Everglades USA Holland America § ~250 all ~125 none Port Rashid UAE Pullmantur Cruises § 0 14 3 none PortMiami USA Royal Caribbean § ~1250 2 none Port of Galveston USA Majesty of the Seas ≥1 ≥1 § 1020 878 1898 12 3 4 April PortMiami USA Princess Cruises § ~200 none Port of San Diego USA Disney Cruise Line § Greg Mortimer 217 all" The Australian operator of an Antarctica cruise ship says 128 of the 217 passengers on the Greg Mortimer – many of them Australian – have tested positive for coronavirus." 10daily.com.au 7 April 2020 128 1 10 April 2020 Montevideo Uruguay Aurora Expeditions § Pride of America 0 ~500 ~500 7 none Honolulu Harbor USA NCL 0 31 1 15 March 2020 PortMiami USA Celebrity Eclipse 2500 10 2 30 March 2020 Port of San Diego USA Celebrity Cruises 0 8 near Rosyth UK FOCL § Celebrity Flora 0 69 48 none Baltra Island Ecuador Costa Fascinosa 764 43 3 none Santos Brazil § ≥1 1 § 0 623 623 ~50% 148 none Nagasaki Japan ≥1 § MSC Seaview 0 615 615 86 near Port of Santos Brazil § Mein Schiff 3 0 2899 2899 all 9 Cuxhaven Germany TUI Cruises § MSC Preziosa 2 MSC Cruises § 0 ~450 ~450 2 2 21 May 2020 Port of Barcelona Spain § 0 ≥1345 ≥1345 19 none Falmouth Jamaica § 5 none near Bremerhaven Germany TUI Cruises § Roald Amundsen 177 160 337 36 none Tromsø Norway Hurtigruten § Paul Gauguin 148 192 340 1 2 August 2020 Papeete France Ponant § >3200 17 5 December 2021 New Orleans USA NCL
Ships with confirmed cases on board
World Dream
The cruise ship World Dream (registered in the Bahamas, operated by Dream Cruises) was on a journey from Nansha Port, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China, to Nha Trang and Da Nang in Vietnam during 19–24 January 2020 with 6,903 persons on board including 108 from Hubei, in which 28 were from Wuhan.
On 24 January 2020, the ship returned to Nansha Port. Port customs performed a temperature check for all disembarking passengers and crew, with 31 people sampled and tested for the virus, including those who had fever during the cruise and those who were in close contact with confirmed cases before they boarded for the cruise. All the test results were negative though some of them were later confirmed to be infected.
Between 24 January 2020 and 2 February 2020, the ship made three additional cruises out of Guangzhou or Hong Kong, including two "cruises to nowhere" and one to the Philippines, although passengers from the journey were not disembarked at Manila due to local resident protests over fear on the virus.
Confirmed cases
On 2 February 2020, the ship departed from Hong Kong for Taiwan with around 3,800 persons on board. On the same night, the cruise company was notified that there were confirmed cases from the ship's former passengers. On the next day, the Guangdong government officially announced that three former passengers from the Vietnam journey had been confirmed infected by the novel coronavirus after they were disembarked. Former passengers from the cruise in China were told to contact local health authority and observer quarantine.
As of 11 February 2020, 12 cases associated with the cruise were confirmed, including 1 ground worker who had temporarily worked on the ship, and 4 relatives of passengers.
Quarantine and preventive actions
After the Guangdong government official announcement of confirmed cases among former passengers, on 4 February 2020, Taiwan blocked the ship's port of call in Kaohsiung due to concern on the virus. On 5 February 2020, World Dream returned to Hong Kong and all 3,800 passengers and crew on board the ship at the time were put under quarantine at Kai Tak Cruise Terminal. The quarantine was lifted on 9 February 2020 after all 1,800 crew members tested negative for the virus. The majority of the passengers were not tested as they had had no contact with the infected Chinese passengers who had been on the ship during 19–24 January.
Evacuation of crew members
After all passengers were disembarked, World Dream cruised to Malaysia. The crew were not allowed to leave the ship in several countries, after one passenger who had disembarked tested positive for COVID-19. The ship finally anchored near Bintan Island, Indonesia. The evacuation of 188 Indonesia crew members from the cruise ship was performed by an Indonesian naval hospital ship and all tested negative for COVID-19. On 28 February 2020 they were quarantined for 14 days on the uninhabited Sebaru Kecil Islet, Thousand Islands, Jakarta.
Diamond Princess
On 4 February 2020, Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare announced that , which had docked at Yokohama the previous day, was quarantined at sea with 10 positive cases on board.
Diamond Princess had originally departed from Yokohama on 20 January 2020 for a roundtrip cruise. On 20 February 2020, the World Health Organization stated that the ship accounted for more than half of the reported infections around the world outside of China.
Westerdam
In February 2020, the Holland America Line ship , departing after a stop in Hong Kong on 1 February, was not allowed to call in the Philippines, Japan, and Guam over concerns regarding coronavirus infections. After initially receiving approval on 10 February to let the passengers disembark in Thailand, as the ship was heading to Laem Chabang port near Bangkok, permission to dock was refused the next day. However, the ship was still maintaining its course to Bangkok and at around 10:30 am CET on 11 February, Westerdam sailed around the southern tip of Vietnam. According to Flip Knibbe, a Dutch passenger on the ship, all the passengers had their temperatures checked a second time. Speaking to NOS on 11 February, Knibbe said "Dit schip is virusvrij": 'This ship is virus-free'. Unlike Diamond Princess, those on board were not in quarantine. Everyone could move freely, shops and restaurants were open and the entertainment programme continued.
After Westerdam was refused at several points of call, on 13 February, the ship was allowed to dock in Sihanoukville, Cambodia. At this point, only the 20 passengers who reported feeling ill were tested, and all of them tested negative.
On 15 February, Malaysia reported that an 83-year-old US citizen who disembarked from Westerdam and flew into Malaysia on 14 February had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. In a second test, requested by both the Holland America Line and Cambodian authorities the woman tested positive again. Despite these findings, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen visited the ship, discouraged use of masks, and encouraged the passengers to tour the city, sparking concerns that another spoke was being added to the contagion network. Westerdam passengers were later denied entry to Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, and other countries.
On 22 February, after treatment with antiviral medications that were speculated to have an effect against COVID-19, the woman's medical condition improved and she was tested negative for SARS-CoV-2. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) initially stated that the woman had never been infected by SARS-CoV-2, but withdrew the claim, clarifying that the CDC "[has] no visibility on whether the initial test of the woman was anything other than positive". Due to possible background politics, it is uncertain whether these results were a false negative, or whether the passenger cleared the virus from her system after 72 hours of intensive treatment.
Grand Princess
Public health officials from Placer County, California, U.S., reported that an elderly resident with underlying health conditions who had died on 4 March 2020 had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 after returning from a Mexican Riviera cruise on between 11 and 21 February.
As a result of increasing reports of former passengers of Grand Princess testing positive, Princess Cruises, the owner and operator of Grand Princess, working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the government of California, and public health officials in San Francisco, terminated a port call in Ensenada, Mexico, planned for 5 March and ordered the ship to return to San Francisco over concerns about the potential for an outbreak on board. Some passengers were quarantined in their own on-board staterooms on 4 March by order of the CDC. In addition, out of the 3533 people on board the ship (2422 passengers and 1111 crew members), 11 passengers and 10 crew members were exhibiting potential symptoms, and Grand Princess was ordered by the government of California to remain offshore while the California National Guard's 129th Rescue Wing airlifted test kits by helicopter to the ship.