Three thousand passengers disembark in Portugal due to Covid’s focus on cruise | tourism and travel
About 3,000 passengers were forced to arrive this Monday (3) from a cruise heading to the Canary Islands after an outbreak of covid-19 forced them to stop in Lisbon, Portuguese authorities said.
The first passengers with a positive result on the “AIDAnova” were on a bus bound for Lisbon airport before dawn, said the head of the Lisbon Maritime Police, Diogo Vieira Branco.
The rest of the passengers would be transferred in the late afternoon, he added.
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The cruise ship, with 2,844 passengers and 1,353 crew (capacity for 5,200 people), docked in Lisbon after passing through the port of La Coruña, in northwestern Spain.
It was scheduled to arrive in the Spanish Canary Islands after passing through the Portuguese island of Madeira.
After the first cases of contagion appeared on Wednesday, operator AIDA Cruises Sunday decided to suspend the trip “for the safety and health of its guests and crew,” a spokesman told AFP.
On Monday, the ship registered 68 positive cases, 60 of them among the crew.
According to the head of the Lisbon Maritime Police, infected people are asymptomatic or show symptoms. Most are quarantined in hotels in Lisbon, he explained.
AIDAnova passengers had to disembark in Lisbon, this Monday (3), after the Covid outbreak – Photo: Pedro Nunes / Reuters