Norwalk onboard cruise ships – the straight poop.Ok, ok, lame title, but I had to do it.
There have been a few ships hit hard by Gastro (gastrointestinal illness) recently. Most notably the Sea Princess which was actually laid up for a bit to do a cleaning. I wanted to talk a little about Gastro onboard to dispel some of the myths and fears people have.
The bug everyone is afraid of is the Noro virus, or Norwalk bug. It’s a gastrointestinal virus and makes you quite ill for a few days. You will get diarrhea or vomiting, or both, and will be weak and ill for usually 24 to 72 hours.
This Noro virus, I have been told by our trainers onboard, is one of the most common stomach bugs on the planet. It is not harmless because it makes you sick, but unless you have a previous illness, or are very old it isn’t something that is going to do you much harm at all. It’s like a bout of stomach flu, certainly not a good time, but nothing to live in fear of.
But if that’s true, you may ask, why all the press about it and why do the cruise ships have all these procedures and protocols and secret codes (level red) in place? It’s because a cruise ship is an enclosed environment with many people inside it. Noro spreads rapidly and easily, normally through hand to mouth contact, and so a few days at sea when the virus is onboard and nobody is leaving the ship can see a rapid spread amongst the population.
What happens on most cruise ships is pretty simple and standard. At embarkation you fill out a health questionnaire. It will ask you if you have vomited or had diarrhea in the past little while. You shouldn’t lie about it because saying yes does NOT mean you can not cruise or that you will be put in quarantine. It means the ships doctor is going to come out and ask you some question’s and assess you. So if he comes out and you tell him that yes you DID have diarrhea this morning but then again last night for dinner you ate the hottest spiced curry you ever had in your life and chased it with 6 bottles of beer, then I think he will pretty much call the “all clear” on you. They also eliminate travel sickness, and other things. If they think it is warranted, they will ask you to go into quarantine for 24 hours (maybe more) as soon as you board the ship. Just as a precaution. You should agree to this without complaint because if the doctor thinks you might NOT stay in your cabin for the period of time he has asked he will deny you boarding, and yes, they are able to do that.
If you are onboard and you come down with symptoms the same thing happens. You see the doctor, he clears you or puts you in quarantine for a period, and the “sanitization” begins. This just means your cabin will be treated or “fogged”. This means a team of guys in hazmat looking uniforms come in and use a special virus killing cleaner on everything. Sometimes they put in a little machine that “fogs” this cleaner in the air misting the whole cabin. They may or may not do this and more.
If there are incidents of vomiting or diarrhea in public areas of the ship you will see it treated, at least on princess ships, like a chemical spill. The area will be cordoned off, the hazmat looking guys will come in and spray and clean and sanitize and keep the area cordoned off for about 2 hours after they are done.
Should there be more than one or two cases of gastro onboard the ship will usually go into a level RED. This is not a scary horrible thing. It is a good thing. It is to prevent the gastro from spreading and ruining your cruise! It means we start doing certain things, or rather stop doing them. Crew will stop touching passengers, not even hand shakes take place. You can not serve yourself any food, crew will be banned from public area’s, you will see three times more cleaners in the public areas all cleaning like mad with virus killing cleaner and little masks and gloves on. Basically level red means we try and reduce the amount of person to person contact, person to food item contact, person to physical item contact as much as possible until there are no more cases reported to the medical clinic. Then we go back to green level.
It’s important to realize not all gastrointestinal illness onboard a ship is Norwalk. It might be reaction to the travel, the food or any number of other things. But we treat it all as if it WAS Norwalk. Also, most cases of Norwalk on ships originated from OUTSIDE the ship. Many cases are contracted on airplanes for example but your not on the plane long enough to see the symptoms, and so the poor cruise ships take the wrap as gastro causing menaces, but it just isn’t so.
If a cruise ship reaches a certain percentage of sick passengers, and I honestly don’t know that number, but I think its around ten percent (3% before you report it to CDC) then the ship will be stopped like Sea Princess. Passengers sent home and the whole ship will be sanitized. They do this because it will become an endless cycle otherwise. The virus will be alive onboard and pass from one cruise to the next. I have heard stories of older ships from the past that had Noro onboard for years.
Tips to protect yourself? Wash your hands ALLOT! And stop sticking your fingers in your mouth! That’s about all you can really do in my opinion. I live onboard and I don’t live in fear of it. There is ONE bit of advice they give to passengers which I think is REALLY STUPID advice. They say to not hold the hand railings on the ships stairwells! You’re on a ship that moves. Would you rather risk a broken neck, paralysis and even death from a bad fall than have a little diarrhea? For god’s sake hold the hand rail, especially in bad seas, and then go wash your hands before you eat.
If you’re wondering, yes, crew gets quarantined as well if we show symptoms. In fact if we have ANY indication in the slightest of diarrhea OR vomiting we MUST report to clinic and we WILL be quarantined for 24 to 72 hours. If you do NOT go and they find out you are fired. It is a simple rule. We are VERY careful onboard.
Oh by the way, you should not worry about reporting the symptoms of gastrointestinal illness to the ships medical center because all ships I have heard of do not charge for services when it is a gastro related issue.
From the Crew and Unusual punishment web site.
Frosty 4