the alarm goes off – The Doubt
A cruise ship with tourists Covid positive docks at Genoa and all safety procedures already tested are triggered. But the alarm did not reach the levels of last year, when the pandemic raged across the country. The Italian case is not isolated: all over the world there are cruise ships with covid problems: the US health authorities, for example, have raised the level of health warning from 3 to 4. all Bahamas landings prohibited. There Royal Caribbean sets up quarantine ships. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 60 cruise ships are monitored due to some cases of Covid on board. The Caribbean islands of Curaçao and Aruba in the Netherlands Antilles have banned docking.
Msc Grandiosa, this is the name of the ship that arrived at the quay in the port of Genoa from Marseille, carrying about a thousand people. 150 cruise passengers tested positive after swabs on board, according to the health protocol adopted by the shipping company. The people who tested positive, “most of them asymptomatic,” MSC writes in a note, were confined to their respective cabins while the ship’s medical director contacted Maritime Health to inform them of what had happened. A meeting between Usmaf, the shipping company, Liguria civil protection and harbor master’s office led to the drafting of the evacuation plan for tourists positive results: Italian cruise passengers residing in Northern Italy disembark in Genoa to be transferred on special vehicles to their residences while tourists residing in the Center-South disembark in Civitavecchia.
About a dozen foreign citizens with Covid-positive results will be hosted in a protected residence in Genoa and in a rsa del basso Piedmont. All transfers will be handled by the shipping company which, she recalls, has implemented the “Safety and health protocol” which it has adopted “to effectively protect all passengers, crew and the territories visited by our ships”. The ship will depart regularly from Genoa this evening to continue its itinerary.
The only cruise ship that docked in Genoa with Covid-19 positive people was, on March 23, 2020 in full pandemic, the Msc Splendida. A crew member had been sent off the ship in a lifeboat after he exhibited symptoms with the disease and had difficulty breathing. The ship was close to Sardinia and headed for Marseille to disembark all its passengers. The next day the shipping company informed the crew that the person had tested positive after a second test. Consequently, 16 crew members were quarantined. Subsequently the ship to Genoa so that some crew members disembark together.
As of April 1, 2020, 26 crew members had been quarantined, with 3 crew members having high temperature. Genoa was the first city to equip itself with a “hospital ship”: on 19 March 2020 a fully equipped GNV ferry moored on the quay provided assistance to patients with Covid-19 and to people in hospital discharging who were required to spend a period quarantine in controlled facilities before returning to their homes.