We all know that cruise ships are petri dishes at the best of time, and as someone who has been on two lengthy cruises in the last few years -- I can only imagine how fast COVID-19 spreads on a ship.
Well, according to Florida-based newspaper the Miami Herald, it seems it is really bad. At the moment, there is no global organization that keeps tabs on COVID-19 cases on cruise ships, so the Miami Herald took it upon itself to find out just how bad coronavirus has been on cruise liners across the world.
The Miami Herald found that at least 3582 people tested positive for COVID-19 either during, or right after their cruise. The death toll is "at least 65 people" because of it, while COVID-19 cases were discovered on a huge 54 cruises around the world. 54 might not sound like much, but that represents 1/5 of the global cruise ships in the oceans. Yeah 1 out of 5 had COVID-19 on-board. Yikes.
Worse yet, is that those people on cruises need to get home -- so they were spreading COVID-19 to hospitals (if they were sick at the time) and their homes (if they weren't sick at the time). Add on top of that the people were flying on commercial planes so they would've been spreading it to thousands of people at a time.
Where did the Miami Herald get their data from? The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as foreign health departments, news reports, and on top of that interviews directly from passengers and crew from the cruise ships themselves.
The outlet also reached out to 1 out of 4 of the world's largest cruise lines, but only Carnival and MSC Cruises would provide data.
If you want to read Miami Herald's entire report, check it out here.
