Coral PrincessThe Coral Princess arrived in Fort Lauderdale this weekend with 157 of 2,016 cruise passengers aboard the Princess Cruises’ ship stricken with nausea/vomiting and diarrhea which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suspect are symptoms related to norovirus.

The noro-infected passengers comprise 7.79% of the total passenger population on the ship. 25 of 881 (2.84%) crew members are also infected.

The CDC was unable to conclude where the norovirus came from. I am not aware of a single instance when the CDC has pinpointed the cause of a cruise ship disease outbreak. Unfortunately, the public is often left with the "blame game" of wondering whether the cruise ship food or water was contaminated (which the CDC and FDA generally say are the most likely causes of gastrointestinal outbreaks), or the outbreak was caused by a sick galley worker, or was brought aboard by sick passengers, and then spread because of inadequate hygiene and poor cleaning procedures.

Several years ago, Time magazine published an article titled 13 Worst Norovirus Outbreaks on Cruise Ships. The overall winner of Time’s top 13 list was Princess Cruises which had five outbreaks on its brand alone: Crown Princess (January 2010) with 396 ill; Crown Princess (February 2012) – 363; Ruby Princess (March 2013) – 276; Coral Princess (February 2009) – 271; and Sun Princess (July 2012) – 216.

The last norovirus outbreak involving the Coral Princess was in April 2015.

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Photo credit: Roy Luck – CC BY 2.0, commons / wikimedia.

Hat tip to the popular Crew Center blog which first covered the outbreak.