Aboard the Celebrity
Constellation, 92 out of 2,056 passengers, plus eight crew members, fell ill with
norovirus during the course of a nine-day voyage that ended on Friday. The most
prevalent symptoms included vomiting and diarrhea, U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) noted.
According to
tracking website CruiseMapper,
the ship was sailing a round-trip itinerary that departed from Tampa on January
3, and took guests to port visits in New
Orleans, Cozumel,
Belize City and Costa Maya.
In response to the
outbreak, Celebrity Cruises implemented enhanced cleaning and disinfection
protocols, isolated persons who fell ill and collected samples for testing, according
to the CDC. TravelPulse has reached out to Celebrity, but no immediate response
was made to the request for comment.
According to USA
Today, this incident marks the first instance of gastrointestinal illness aboard
a cruise ship this year that’s large enough to warrant the issuance of a public
health notification and prompt a CDC investigation.
In 2023, the
national health agency logged 14 outbreaks of gastrointestinal illness aboard
cruise ships, three of which arose aboard Celebrity ships. That total was higher
than in the pre-pandemic years between 2017 and 2019, and norovirus was the
culprit in all cases but one last year.
Although norovirus
most often makes headlines for outbreaks aboard cruise ships, Ben Lopman, a
professor of epidemiology at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public
Health, told USA Today in an interview last year that cases arising on cruises
represent only a "tiny minority of norovirus outbreaks". In fact, the
majority of such incidents occur in healthcare settings, such as nursing homes.
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