Cabin fever: Singapore cruise passengers stuck in rooms after COVID-19 case
Royal Caribbean’s Quantum of the Seas cruise ship is moored at Marina Bay Cruise Center in Singapore on Wednesday after a passenger tested positive for COVID-19 during a cruise to nowhere.
A Royal Caribbean “cruise-to-nowhere” from Singapore confined nearly 1,700 passengers to their cabins in port for more than 16 hours after a COVID-19 case was detected on board, before allowing some to disembark on Wednesday.
All passengers aboard the Quantum of the Seas vessel had cleared a mandatory polymerase chain reaction test for the virus up to three days before the four-day cruise began on Monday.
Authorities said close contacts of the COVID-19 patient among the 1,680 guests and 1,148 crew members on board had so far tested negative. The passengers were stuck in their rooms while contact tracing was being conducted.
The coronavirus patient, an 83-year-old male, had reported to the ship’s medical center with diarrhoea and a subsequent onboard test revealed the infection. He was taken to hospital on Wednesday after the ship returned to port.
Other guests were awoken with the news of the infection in the early hours. “I was like: ‘there it goes, the worst fear has happened,’” said passenger Melvin Chew, a 31-year-old business development manager.
The Quantum of the Seas returned to Singapore at 8am, and a Reuters witness saw some passengers disembarking at about 8pm. All passengers will undergo mandatory COVID-19 testing before leaving the terminal.
The ship’s captain told passengers over the tannoy that the passenger disembarkation process would start around 7:30pm and would take three to four hours.
The crew will rest overnight and take PCR tests in the morning, he added.
“I am terribly sorry that the cruise ended a day early and ended this way,” the captain said in a recording heard by Reuters.
Royal Caribbean said it was cancelling its upcoming trip on Thursday “in an overabundance of caution” and plans to resume sailing on December 14.
