Nearly 1,700 passengers on a Royal Caribbean “cruise-to-nowhere” from Singapore were told to remain in their cabins on Wednesday after a COVID-19 case was detected on board, forcing the ship back to port, authorities said.
According to the Singapore Tourism Board (STB), all passengers had cleared a mandatory polymerase chain reaction test for COVID-19 up to three days before the cruise started on Monday.
The infected passenger, an 83-year-old male, had reported to the onboard medical center with diarrhea, and others on board were told of the infection early on Wednesday.
Authorities said close contacts of the patient among the 1,680 guests and 1,148 crew members on board have so far tested negative and that all passengers must isolate in their rooms as contact tracing continued on Wednesday afternoon.
The case on board is another setback for Singapore after a plan to open a quarantine-free air travel bubble with Hong Kong last month was postponed at the eleventh hour
The “cruise-to-nowhere” by Royal Caribbean is one of its first sailings since the company halted global operations in March due to the coronavirus. There were 1,680 guests and 1,148 crew members on board, a spokesperson for Royal Caribbean said.
Singapore, which has had just over 58,000 cases and 29 deaths, has been reporting less than a handful of local infections in recent weeks.
The global cruise industry has taken a major hit from the pandemic, with some of the earliest big outbreaks found on cruise ships. In one case in February in Yokohama, passengers were stuck for weeks aboard the Diamond Princess with over 700 guests and crew infected.
