Japanese authorities have confirmed 60 new corona infections on an Italian cruise ship that is currently in the port of Nagasaki. The “Costa Atlantica” has been there for repair work since the end of January. There are no passengers on board, but 623 crew members, all of whom have now been tested for the corona virus at least once, reports the Japanese television station NHK.
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With the new infections, a quarter of the crew has now been shown to be infected with the corona virus. Only one had to be treated in the hospital. All others are still on board because they show only slight or no symptoms.
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“You know exactly who is there and you can examine everyone.”
Thousands of people in a confined space: The current outbreak in Japan once again proves how easy it is for the corona virus on cruise ships. Even when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared pathogens to be a pandemic, at least 6,000 passengers still took cruises, analyzes by the “Guardian” show. In Australia, a provider is being investigated who is said to have downplayed a corona outbreak on one of his ships.
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Corona cases occurred on at least 30 ships by Saturday. The “Diamond Princess” was particularly hard hit. For weeks, the cruise ship was the site with the most corona infections outside of China after being quarantined in Japan in early February.
More than 700 of the 3700 passengers have been shown to be infected with the corona virus. The quarantine had therefore been sharply criticized. “The infection rate on board the ship was around four times higher than what we can see on land in China’s worst infected areas,” said Joacim Rocklöv, professor of epidemiology at Umeå University in Sweden, who investigated the outbreak on board. He is certain that if Japan had released the 3,700 passengers and crew members immediately upon arrival, not so many people would have been infected with the pathogen.
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For science, cruise ships are a corona test battery. Where many people live together for a long time in a confined space shows particularly well how the virus spreads. Because nobody can get out, possible chains of infection can also be reconstructed more easily.
“Cruise ships are an ideal experiment with a closed population,” said John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at Stanford University. “You know exactly who is there and you can examine everyone.” It is much more difficult on land. It is mainly people who have symptoms that are tested there.
Outbreaks of the highly contagious norovirus, which triggers gastrointestinal infections, repeatedly show how easily pathogens spread on cruise ships. Coronavirus was also able to spread significantly more easily on the cruise ship, data from the “Diamond Princess” show.
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When the passengers were still allowed to move freely on the ship, every person who tested positive probably infected seven other people on average, model calculations by Japanese researchers show. According to current knowledge, the reproductive rate of the coronavirus is usually around two to three if it encounters a population that is not immune and has no contact restrictions. This means that a corona patient will pass the virus on to two to three people in these cases.
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The virus was probably able to spread so easily on board the ship because the passengers lived so close together and were in contact with potentially contaminated surfaces, researchers believe. However, a smear infection for the corona virus has not yet been reliably proven. The main route of infection is most likely a droplet infection through direct contact with an infected person.
When the ship passengers were only allowed to stay in their own cabins, the infection rate dropped significantly. Without this measure, up to 2,300 people would have been infected in the weeks when the ship was stuck – more than 60 percent of travelers.
The coronavirus apparently spread to several cruise ships even when the passengers had to stay in their cabins and comply with the applicable hygiene regulations. Researchers therefore suspect that those affected may have contracted ventilation systems. If the suspicion is confirmed, the virus, once on board, would be difficult to contain. Interior cabins in particular are dependent on artificial ventilation.
This raises the question of whether cruises may not be possible until the pandemic is over. However, this should only be the case in more than a year if there is a vaccine.
Cruise operator Aida has so far canceled all trips until the end of May. How it will go on is unclear. Bookings for planned cruises in the coming year are already booming.
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