Cruise Ship Returns To Operations – Suffers Coronavirus Outbreak

It is no secret that cruise companies are eager to get back to business. After nearly 4 months without an embarkation, the world’s major cruise lines are hemorrhaging money and selling off ships in order to stay financially afloat. But some smaller and very intrepid cruise lines have already begun to operate again in hopes that they will be spared further pain from coronavirus. As one cruise company has found out, the virus is still prevalent and very much contagious aboard cruise ships.

ThePointsGuy.com reports that Hurtigruten, a Norwegian expedition cruise company, has announced that four crew members aboard the company’s ship, Roald Amundsen, have been admitted into medical care following a seven-night cruise of the Arctic.

Tests subsequently revealed that the group had been sick for several days with coronavirus.

The Roald Amundsen has a capacity of up to 535 passengers and several hundred crew. The ship is now in isolation and authorities are testing approximately 160 crew members for coronavirus. Additionally, Hurtigruten is attempting to contact approximately 177 people who had sailed on the ship with the sick crewmembers.

Hurtigruten has canceled the Roald Amundsen’s next scheduled sailing.

This news comes as a major blow to the cruise industry, which had been hoping to return to service as early as October. With coronavirus cases beginning to spike again across the globe and in the absence of a coherent and concrete plan to safely return cruise ships to service, some are speculating that there may not be international cruising for the remainder of the year.