Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was warning Americans to avoid cruise ships altogether to protect themselves from the COVID omicron spike.
Two-plus years later, the cruise industry would have us believe it’s all ancient history and the pandemic is a minor concern.Īs recently as last December, the U.S. The story soon became international news, and by the time the ship finally docked in Port Everglades, Fla., on April 2, 2020, four passengers were dead and hundreds more were ill with the virus. They just thought I was being a dramatic woman.” (Requests for comment from Carnival have not been returned.) “I kept telling my managers that I think we have COVID on board and they’re just giving people cough medicine and sending them back to work. “I started feeling sick on March 9th, a week before it spread throughout the ship,” she said. Montgomery was among the first to get ill. When the ship first left the port in Argentina in early March, they were still days away from the World Health Organization classifying COVID-19 as a pandemic.Įrin Montgomery holed up in her cabin during her 14-day quarantine aboard the Zandaam. That sense of security came crashing down on March 27, when the captain made a chilling announcement over the ship’s loudspeakers: “Unfortunately, four of our guests have passed away.” The virus crept in slowly, infecting passengers and crew who assumed they were safe when corporate doctors back on land downplayed the risks. Holland America’s cruise ship Zaandam prepares to dock at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on April 2, 2020, after the COVID-19 deaths of four passengers.
With 1,242 passengers and 586 crew members, they had set sail just three weeks earlier.įew people realized it at first, but “COVID-19 was tearing through the Zaandam,” write investigative journalists Michael Smith and Jonathan Franklin in their new book “Cabin Fever: The Harrowing Journey of a Cruise Ship at the Dawn of a Pandemic” (Doubleday), out now. On March 27th, 2020, the Zaandam, a luxury cruise line owned by Carnival Corp., was anchored off Panama City. “Having people die on you and you’re helpless to do anything about it.” Montgomery, then in her mid-50s, worked as the ship’s sanitation officer. “It was horrible,” she tells The Post, bursting into tears. ‘Titanic vibes’: Carnival cruise passenger’s post video of completely flooded cabinĬarnival drops exemption request for unvaccinated guests, eases testing requirementsĬanine cruise sends furry friends sailing around the Big AppleĮrin Montgomery still gets emotional when she remembers her last trip on the MS Zaandam cruise ship. Pennsylvania shark attack victim ID’d as mom, university employee
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