Gastroenteritis strikes same cruise ship in Brazil for the 2nd time; 47 passenger sickened
By Stan Lehman, APFriday, March 12, 2010
Gastroenteritis strikes cruise ship in Brazil
SAO PAULO — Nearly 50 passengers aboard an international cruise ship docked in Brazil have been stricken with vomiting and diarrhea, a health official said Friday. It was the same ship that last week was briefly placed under quarantine after hundreds of people came down with gastroenteritis.
“At least 47 passengers on the Vision of the Seas, operated by Royal Caribbean International, were stricken by what we believe are noroviruses that cause gastroenteritis,” a spokesman for the National Agency for Sanitary Vigilance said. He spoke on condition of anonymity, in line with department policy.
The ship, docked in the port of Santos, was not placed under quarantine and the nearly 2,000 passengers aboard were allowed to leave since “no one was seriously ill and there was no danger of the disease spreading.”
It was the Vision of the Seas’ first cruise since last week when 310 people came down with gastroenteritis caused by noroviruses, the spokesman said.
The ship will be cleansed again “but now that we are pretty sure that noroviruses are again to blame, we know what kind of cleaning agents to use,” the spokesman said.
Noroviruses cause gastroenteritis — a common inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract.
Norovirus typically is not life threatening and does not generally cause long-term effects. In rare cases, the elderly and young children can die from dehydration caused by norovirus symptoms.
The first case was detected Wednesday when the ship was heading to Santos, its last stop on a weeklong cruise.
Royal Caribbean spokesman Alexandre Raith said most passengers were Brazilian.
A statement by Royal Caribbean confirmed the number of stricken passengers but provided no detailed explanation on how gastroenteritis struck the same ship twice in a week.
In January last year at a port in Salvador in northeastern Brazil, hundreds of passengers on a Swiss-owned cruise ship were also stricken with severe vomiting and diarrhea caused by food poisoning.
