Royal Caribbean cruise ship forced into U-turn after hundreds of passengers get sick

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Royal Caribbean Cruise Line’s Oasis of the Seas cruise ship was forced to return to homeport after Norovirus outbreak sickened almost 300 cruise passengers on board. Prior to forced U-turn, even after the Oasis of the Seas was essentially declared a quarantine vessel โ€“ the government of Jamaica forbade passengers from disembarking at Falmouth, where they had a day of excursions planned – Royal Caribbean had initially planned on continuing the cruise as usual, a letter from the cruise company reveals.

The cruise line is planning to clean up the ship in time to send out a new load of victims โ€“ er, holiday-makers โ€“ the next day.

โ€œWe have no reason to believe that any illness will have any impact on the remainder of our sailing,โ€ they wrote to passengers, a day before canceling the remainder of the seven-day cruise and announcing they would sail back to Cape Canaveral, Florida on Saturday morning. All 8,000 passengers will receive refunds.

Sick passengers and crew were treated with over-the-counter medication, and staff took what precautions they could to prevent the spread of disease, serving all drinks and food themselves lest passengers unwittingly share virus-laden tableware, but there is only so much one can do to alleviate peopleโ€™s discomfort on board a floating epidemic.

โ€œWe think the right thing to do is to get everyone home early rather than have guests worry about their health,โ€ said Royal Caribbean spokesman Omar Torres.

The rush to return to port wasnโ€™t necessarily out of concern for the sick passengers and crew, however โ€“ Royal Caribbean was in a hurry to hose down the ship in preparation for another herd of passengers due to depart on Sunday.

โ€œReturning on Saturday also gives us more time to completely clean and sanitize the ship before her next sailing,โ€ Torres told NBC, omitting that the โ€œnext sailingโ€ of the 8,000-passenger ship would take place within 24 hours.

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Chief Assignment editor is Oleg Siziakov

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