120 Sick on Cruise Ship

From correspondents in New Orleans

October 16, 2003

A NASTY stomach bug hit 120 passengers and crew members during a Mexican cruise scheduled to end at New Orleans.

Passengers began showing up in the Holiday's infirmary two days into its five-day cruise. By Wednesday, 79 of its 1670 passengers and 41 of its 660 crew members had become ill, a Carnival Cruise Line spokeswoman said.

"The ship's crew is conducting aggressive cleaning and sanitizing ... to prevent further spread," spokeswoman Jennifer de la Cruz said.

Dave Forney of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had said earlier that 5 percent of the passengers and 2 percent of its crew were ill. De la Cruz' figures worked out to nearly 5 percent of the passengers and 6 percent of the crew.

Ships must tell the CDC if 2 percent of passengers or crew have gastrointestinal symptoms, and 3 percent is the statistical definition of an outbreak, Forney said. Forney, chief of the CDC's vessel sanitation program, spoke at a New York seminar sponsored by the cruise industry.

So far in 2002, Forney said, there have been 23 outbreaks of gastrointestinal illness aboard 19 ships.

Small samples collected on the Holiday would be sent to a CDC lab for testing once the ship docks, de la Cruz said.

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