A puke fest is underway on the Carnival Glory cruise ship, with passengers taking to the message boards at Cruise Critic to comment that passengers are suffering from diarrhea and other norovirus-like symptoms,

The message board states that Carnival prepared a letter to passengers this weekend that passengers on the prior cruise experienced norovirus sickness. Several passengers are stating that the current cruise has been plagued by norovirus as well.  Some comments mention the strong smell of vomit in public areas of the cruise ship.  

One passenger comments that the Centers for Disease control (CDC) came onto the Glory on August 9th.  

There has been no official determination by the CDC yet. According to the CDC, cruise line calling on U.S. ports are required to report the total number of gastrointestinal (GI) illness cases evaluated by the medical staff when the GI illness count exceeds 2% of the total number of passengers or crew on board.

Last year there were 14 official cases of norovirus on cruise ships.

The usual debate is taking place about where the virus comes from, how it’s spread and how the cruise lines is handling the outbreak.   The cruise industry bristles at the label "cruise ship virus" and always blames the passengers for not washing their hands and spreading the virus. The fact of the matter is that no one is conducting a scientific analysis to determine the origin of the virus notwithstanding the CDC’s findings that the most common cause of norovirus on cruise ships in contaminated food or water.  

Some people are commenting that Carnival is doing a good job dealing with the outbreak, while others are saying that the cruise line is not disclosing the true number of affected passengers to avoid an official determination that the outbreak is norovirus related.

The last norovirus involved the Sun Princess during a July  8 – 21st sailing.  

Augyst 13, 2012 Update: The CDC says that the type of virus is "unknown."   This is the ninth gastrointestinal outbreak aboard a cruise ship calling on a U.S. port this year. 

 

Photo credit: Mark Davis via Wikimedia