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 ships – including crowded semi-enclosed areas, increased exposure to new environments, and limited medical resources – contributing to the heightened risk and rapid spread of the disease.
The British-registered Diamond Princess 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. With that, many cruise lines suspended their operations to mitigate the spread of the pandemic and were replaced by "cruises to nowhere" that had no stops.
By June 2020, over 40 cruise ships had confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 on board. The last cruise ship with passengers aboard during the first wave of the pandemic, Artania, 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.
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.
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.
After all passengers were disembarked, World Dream cruised to Malaysia. The crew were not allowed to leave the ship in several countries, after one passenger who had disembarked tested positive for COVID-19. The ship finally anchored near Bintan Island, Indonesia. The evacuation of 188 Indonesia crew members from the cruise ship was performed by an Indonesian naval hospital ship and all tested negative for COVID-19. On 28 February 2020 they were quarantined for 14 days on the uninhabited Sebaru Kecil Islet, Thousand Islands, Jakarta.
Diamond Princess
On 4 February 2020, Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare announced that Diamond Princess, which had docked at Yokohama the previous day, was quarantined at sea with 10 positive cases on board.
Diamond Princess had originally departed from Yokohama on 20 January 2020 for a roundtrip cruise. On 20 February 2020, the World Health Organization stated that the ship accounted for more than half of the reported infections around the world outside of China.
Westerdam
In February 2020, the Holland America Line ship MS Westerdam, departing after a stop in Hong Kong on 1 February, was not allowed to call in the Philippines, Japan, and Guam over concerns regarding coronavirus infections. After initially receiving approval on 10 February to let the passengers disembark in Thailand, as the ship was heading to Laem Chabang port near Bangkok, permission to dock was refused the next day. However, the ship was still maintaining its course to Bangkok and at around 10:30 am CET on 11 February, Westerdam sailed around the southern tip of Vietnam. According to Flip Knibbe, a Dutch passenger on the ship, all the passengers had their temperatures checked a second time. Speaking to NOS on 11 February, Knibbe said "Dit schip is virusvrij": 'This ship is virus-free'. Unlike Diamond Princess, those on board were not in quarantine. Everyone could move freely, shops and restaurants were open and the entertainment programme continued.
After Westerdam was refused at several points of call, on 13 February, the ship was allowed to dock in Sihanoukville, Cambodia. At this point, only the 20 passengers who reported feeling ill were tested, and all of them tested negative.
On 15 February, Malaysia reported that an 83-year-old US citizen who disembarked from Westerdam and flew into Malaysia on 14 February had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. In a second test, requested by both the Holland America Line and Cambodian authorities the woman tested positive again. Despite these findings, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen visited the ship, discouraged use of masks, and encouraged the passengers to tour the city, sparking concerns that another spoke was being added to the contagion network. Westerdam passengers were later denied entry to Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, and other countries.
On 22 February, after treatment with antiviral medications that were speculated to have an effect against COVID-19, the woman's medical condition improved and she was tested negative for SARS-CoV-2. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) initially stated that the woman had never been infected by SARS-CoV-2, but withdrew the claim, clarifying that the CDC "[has] no visibility on whether the initial test of the woman was anything other than positive". Due to possible background politics, it is uncertain whether these results were a false negative, or whether the passenger cleared the virus from her system after 72 hours of intensive treatment.
Grand Princess
Public health officials from Placer County, California, U.S., reported that an elderly resident with underlying health conditions who had died on 4 March 2020 had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 after returning from a Mexican Riviera cruise on Grand Princess between 11 and 21 February.
As a result of increasing reports of former passengers of Grand Princess testing positive, Princess Cruises, the owner and operator of Grand Princess, working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the government of California, and public health officials in San Francisco, terminated a port call in Ensenada, Mexico, planned for 5 March and ordered the ship to return to San Francisco over concerns about the potential for an outbreak on board. Some passengers were quarantined in their own on-board staterooms on 4 March by order of the CDC. In addition, out of the 3533 people on board the ship (2422 passengers and 1111 crew members), 11 passengers and 10 crew members were exhibiting potential symptoms, and Grand Princess was ordered by the government of California to remain offshore while the California National Guard's 129th Rescue Wing airlifted test kits by helicopter to the ship.
On 6 March, U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence announced that, of the 46 tests conducted, 19 crew members and 2 passengers had tested positive, and added that the ship would be brought to a non-commercial port, with everyone on the ship being tested and quarantined as necessary, while President Trump, ignoring expert advice, wanted those on board Grand Princess to stay on the ship so that they would not be counted as American cases, which would otherwise "double because of one ship that wasn't our fault".
On 9 March, the ship docked at the Port of Oakland and passengers started disembarking. More than 3,000 people on board were to be quarantined, with passengers at land facilities and the crew on board.
By 25 March 2020, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said that, of the 1,103 passengers who elected to be tested, 103 tested positive, 699 tested negative, and the remaining results were pending.
As of 20 April 2020, neither Princess Cruises, nor the CDC, nor the HHS appeared to have made any subsequent test results public. In addition, some passengers complained about waiting for weeks without getting test results back, and some passengers have not been tested at all even though they showed symptoms upon disembarkation, despite Vice-President Pence's earlier claim that all passengers would be tested.
The first known person in California to die of the virus at the time, as well as the first cases in Alberta, Hawaii, and Utah, were all former passengers of Grand Princess.
River Anuket
A Taiwanese-American tourist, who had been a passenger on a Nile River cruise ship variously known as MS River Anuket or Asara, discovered that she was positive for SARS-CoV-2 after she returned to Taiwan. World Health Organization officials informed Egyptian authorities of the situation, and all crew members and 150 passengers aboard the cruise ship were tested for SARS-CoV-2. On 7 March 2020, health authorities announced that 45 people on board had tested positive despite being asymptomatic, and that the ship had been placed in quarantine at a dock in Luxor.
Costa Magica
On 12 March, two passengers aboard Costa Magica were reported to be tested positively for COVID-19 while quarantined in Martinique. The ship, which departed from Guadeloupe with 3,300 people on board, had been disallowed entry at several sea ports including Grenada, Tobago, Barbados and Saint Lucia, due to the presence of over 300 Italian nationals on board.
All the passengers were disembarked, and 930 crew members stayed aboard. Eventually, the ship stopped three miles (4.8 km) offshore from Miami, and on 26 March, the U.S. Coast Guard reported evacuation of six sick crew members from Costa Magica.
Braemar
On 13 March 2020, five passengers tested positive for the COVID-19 virus aboard MS Braemar. As a result, the ship was denied entry into its destination, the Bahamas. The infected patients were discovered after a former passenger of the cruise tested positive in the Canadian province of Alberta. The infected passenger disembarked off the cruise in Kingston, Jamaica, but it was unknown where they contracted the disease.
Sint Maarten also denied a request from the cruise to allow passengers to fly out. Cuba finally allowed the ship to dock and evacuated all travellers to the United Kingdom on 17 March.
Costa Luminosa
On 29 February 2020, a 68-year-old Italian man in critical condition was transferred from Costa Luminosa to a hospital in the Cayman Islands due to heart issues. On 12 March, the Health Services Authority of the Cayman Islands announced that the man was their first confirmed coronavirus case. His death was announced two days later.
On 8 March, a 68-year-old Italian woman was quarantined in the U.S. Territory of Puerto Rico while being tested for the virus. She had arrived there via Costa Luminosa, which had departed from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, US. On 13 March she, her husband and a third person's tests came back positive for the virus, the first confirmed cases in Puerto Rico.