PANIC ON THE EBOLA CRUISE: ‘It’s Like A Floating Petri Dish’
NICK ALLEN AND ROB CRILLY, The Daily Telegraph
BusinessInsider.com
Oct. 18, 2014
It was supposed to be an escape to the Caribbean sunshine for a week of partying, relaxation, and sipping champagne while watching gorgeous sunsets from the decks of a luxury cruise ship.
But four days after the Carnival Magic set sail from Galveston, Texas rumours began swirling that all was not well on board.
The ship, complete with a swimming pool, an array of water slides, and a giant cinema screen, inexplicably stopped off the coast of Belize and the whispers began.
“The rumours were going round — we were stuck in the mud. Someone’s been kidnapped,” said one passenger.
As the theories got wilder over the clink of cocktail glasses at the bar, nobody imagined they were actually about to be at the centre of an international Ebola scare.
Finally, the captain confirmed on the loudspeaker that, among their number, was a woman who worked as a lab supervisor at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.
She had processed clinical samples from Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man who was the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States. Mr Duncan, 42, died on Oct 8, four days before the ship sailed.
The lab supervisor, and her husband, were voluntarily quarantined in their cabin as fear spread on the ship, which is due to arrive back in Galveston on Sunday.
Passenger Jon Malone said there was “utter panic” on board, adding: “People are scared. I’ve seen people crying. You’re using the same buffet line as someone else, the same waiters, the folks that clean the state rooms.
“If someone was cleaning their state room and cleaned yours right after, the exposure that you have there to elevators … it’s very tight quarters and a lot of interaction.
“It’s really difficult to control any type of virus that’s on a cruise ship. It’s like a floating petri dish. It spreads very rapidly. They’re cleaning elevators. I’ve seen people with pink liquid cleaning the bar area and the handrails.”
The Rest…HERE
