Why are cruise ships such fertile ground for infection? • FRANCE 24 English

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]Often called floating cities, with their onboard cinemas, restaurants, and thousands of passengers at close quarters for weeks, even months, when a virus smuggles itself on board, it can spread at a rate of knots.

[00:00:17]They live together, eat together. It's a captive population. The same people for weeks on a long cruise. It's also to do with the catering, how food is served, how dishes are cleaned. Food hygiene is very important.

[00:00:32]Last year, 23 epidemics were identified on ships. That's a 30-year record.

[00:00:38]Just last week, over 100 people on the Caribbean Princess were taken ill with norovirus on a Caribbean cruise. Some disembarked, and the vessel was disinfected from top to bottom.

[00:00:50]While in 2020, in the early days of the COVID pandemic, panic aboard the Diamond Princess. Of its more than 3,700 passengers, 700 fell ill despite a lockdown confining them to their cabins.

[00:01:04]14 of them died.

[00:01:07]But when do you evacuate the sick to protect the other passengers, and when do you keep them on board to protect the population at large?

[00:01:16]Before you make the decision to release people, you have to make sure the pathogen doesn't pose a threat to the country where you're docking. So, as long as you aren't sure, you keep everyone on board while you investigate.

[00:01:29]COVID-19 raised awareness of these dangers, and cruise ships are now equipped with improved air filtration systems to limit transmission.