Second Florida cruise ship with no-sail order to test crew members for coronavirus

Taylor Dolven
·2 min read

A second Fort Lauderdale-based cruise ship, the Caribbean Princess, received a no-sail order from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and is headed back to U.S. waters from Costa Rica to test two crew members for COVID-19, according to a letter from Princess Cruises handed out to passengers Sunday night.

The Caribbean Princess, currently on a 10-day cruise out of Port Everglades, will stop in Grand Cayman on Monday to pick up test kits, and samples will be sent from there to the U.S. for testing, the letter from Princess Cruises said. No one will be allowed to disembark in Grand Cayman. Then, the ship will return to the coast of Florida to await the results of the tests.

Princess Cruises is owned by Miami-based Carnival Corp. Spokespeople for the cruise company and for Port Everglades did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The two crew members currently on the Caribbean Princess transferred from the Grand Princess 10 and 16 days ago, according to the letter passengers received Sunday from Princess. The company said in its letter that the crew members are not showing any symptoms of the virus and are being isolated in individual cabins.

The Grand Princess cruise ship has 21 cases of the novel coronavirus on board, 19 of them crew members. The ship is headed to Oakland, California, Monday, where federal health authorities will begin to evacuate passengers over multiple days. The Grand Princess is the second cruise ship to house a coronavirus outbreak. The Diamond Princess ship saw nearly 700 people contract the virus on board while quarantined in Japan in February.

The no-sail order for the Caribbean Princess comes hours after a no-sail order for another Fort Lauderdale ship, the Regal Princess, was lifted by CDC. The ship was allowed to return to Port Everglades around 10 p.m. Sunday after a day sailing back and forth at sea awaiting coronavirus tests results for two crew members. Both came back negative.

Also on Sunday, the CDC and U.S. State Department issued warnings against traveling on cruise ships.