Cruise ship allowed to dock in Mexico after coronavirus fears
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A cruise ship that was turned away from Jamaica and the Cayman Islands on Tuesday received permission to dock in Mexico on Wednesday.
The MSC Meraviglia from MSC Cruises, was turned away from Jamaica and the Cayman Islands after a crew member tested positive for the flu on Tuesday. The ship, with more than 4,500 passengers and 1,600 crew members, is scheduled to arrive in Cozumel Wednesday evening.
“MSC Cruises is pleased to confirm that it has just received formal and final authorization from the local health authorities in the State of Quintana Roo, Mexico to get to Cozumel,” a spokeswoman for MSC said on Wednesday.
It seemed that the ship was falling into a pattern set by Holland America’s MS Westerdam, which earlier this month was turned away from five countries because authorities feared that people onboard had Covid-19. After the Westerdam docked in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, one passenger tested positive for the illness. The C.D.C. later said that the woman’s diagnosis was a false positive.
More than 81,000 people have been infected with the virus that causes the respiratory disease Covid-19, and new cases have been documented in at least 44 countries and on every continent but Antarctica. So far, nearly 3,000 people have died, the vast majority of them in a single Chinese province, Hubei.
In Europe, France, Spain and Germany reported increases in cases, likely tied to an outbreak in Italy’s Lombardy region, where more than 400 people have been infected. Cases were reported for the first time on Thursday in Estonia and Denmark.
