Cruising with noro and C. perfringens

More than 300 passengers on a cruise ship that docked at Port Everglades, Florida, fell ill with a stomach virus.

The Naples Daily News reports that the Royal Caribbean Cruises Limited’s ship Independence Of The Seas docked Saturday in Florida reported 332 cases of gastro-intestinal illness among the 5,547 guests.

It was the second time in less than a month that illness hit passengers on one of the cruise line’s vessels.

The 5-night cruise was interrupted for those passengers, who had symptoms including vomiting and diarrhea. One passenger, Victoria Nolan, described people throwing up in elevators.

Tracy Flores, a passenger, said her teen son, who is diabetic contracted the illness while on board.

“We brought him Wednesday night we wheeled him in, they already had a full waiting room and as we were sitting there, more wheelchairs were coming in, more wheelchairs were coming,” Flores told WPLG-TV. “Everybody was puking, everywhere they were leaving to go use the bathroom with diarrhea and it was just frightening.”

This follows an outbreak involving 100s of passengers aboard Royal Caribbean’s Ovation of the Seas cruise ship that were stricken with Norovirus on a recent cruise from Singapore to Hobart, Tasmania in Australia. The Ovation of the Seas has a capacity of 5,000 passengers and 1500 in crew members – making it the world’s fourth largest cruise ship and the largest cruise ship to ever sail in Australian waters.

And in something completely different – except for the cruise ship commonality — Outbreak News Today reports that Clostridium perfringens was the cause of an outbreak that sickened over 200 in Nov. 2017 aboard the Princess Cruises vessel Crown Princess.