Early in 2020, in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the disease spread to a number of cruise ships, with the nature of such shipsincluding crowded semi-enclosed areas, increased exposure to new environments, and limited medical resourcescontributing to the heightened risk and rapid spread of the disease.
The British-registered was the first cruise ship to have a major outbreak on board, with the ship quarantined at Yokohama from 4 February 2020 for about a month. Of 3711 passengers and crew, around 700 people became infected and 9 people died.
Governments and ports responded by preventing many cruise ships from docking and advising people to avoid travelling on cruise ships. Many cruise lines suspended their operations to mitigate the spread of the pandemic.
By June 2020, over 40 cruise ships had had confirmed positive cases of coronavirus on board. The last cruise ship with passengers aboard during the first wave of the pandemic, , docked at its home port with its last eight passengers on 8 June 2020. In addition, over 40,000 crew members still remained on cruise ships, some in isolation, in mid-June 2020. Many could not be repatriated because cruise lines refused to cover the cost, and because countries had different and changing rules. The condition was stressful to many of those stranded; multiple suicides were reported.
Domestic UK cruises, confined to ports of call in the British Isles, began to resume in May 2021. United States cruises restarted in June 2021.
Summary of confirmed cases on board
Note: The section symbol ('§') left of the ship name in the table below links to the appropriate section on this page, if it exists.
Ships with confirmed cases on board
World Dream
The cruise ship World Dream (registered in the Bahamas, operated by Dream Cruises) was on a journey from Nansha Port, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China, to Nha Trang and Da Nang in Vietnam during 19–24 January 2020 with 6,903 persons on board including 108 from Hubei, in which 28 were from Wuhan.
On 24 January 2020, the ship returned to Nansha Port. Port customs performed a temperature check for all disembarking passengers and crew, with 31 people sampled and tested for the virus, including those who had fever during the cruise and those who were in close contact with confirmed cases before they boarded for the cruise. All the test results were negative though some of them were later confirmed to be infected.
Between 24 January 2020 and 2 February 2020, the ship made three additional cruises out of Guangzhou or Hong Kong, including two "cruises to nowhere" and one to the Philippines, although passengers from the journey were not disembarked at Manila due to local resident protests over fear on the virus.
Confirmed cases
On 2 February 2020, the ship departed from Hong Kong for Taiwan with around 3,800 persons on board. On the same night, the cruise company was notified that there were confirmed cases from the ship's former passengers. On the next day, the Guangdong government officially announced that three former passengers from the Vietnam journey had been confirmed infected by the novel coronavirus after they were disembarked. Former passengers from the cruise in China were told to contact local health authority and observer quarantine.
As of 11 February 2020, 12 cases associated with the cruise were confirmed, including 1 ground worker who had temporarily worked on the ship, and 4 relatives of passengers.
Quarantine and preventive actions
After the Guangdong government official announcement of confirmed cases among former passengers, on 4 February 2020, Taiwan blocked the ship's port of call in Kaohsiung due to concern on the virus. On 5 February 2020, World Dream returned to Hong Kong and all 3,800 passengers and crew on board the ship at the time were put under quarantine at Kai Tak Cruise Terminal. The quarantine was lifted on 9 February 2020 after all 1,800 crew members tested negative for the virus. The majority of the passengers were not tested as they had had no contact with the infected Chinese passengers who had been on the ship during 19–24 January.