A leisure trip for hundreds of vacationers turned into a real health nightmare , as French authorities blocked a cruise ship in the port of Bordeaux, placing a total of 1,747 people on board in quarantine .
This dramatic development came as an inevitable consequence of the death of a 90-year-old passenger , which, combined with the massive outbreak of cases of acute gastrointestinal infection , immediately mobilized the state mechanism in order to prevent any possible spread.
The luxury ship, which belongs to the Ambassador Cruise Line fleet, sailed into French waters in the early hours of Wednesday from Brest, Brittany. It is carrying 1,233 passengers — the vast majority of whom are British and Irish tourists — as well as 514 crew members . In addition to the tragic death of the elderly man, who reportedly died before the ship even docked at its previous port of Brest, at least 50 other people have developed severe symptoms of gastroenteritis . The peak of the phenomenon was recorded on May 11, with patients suffering from constant vomiting and diarrhea, creating a climate of panic inside the ship.
Scientific and health teams are now in a constant race to identify the exact nature of the disease. Although the first on-site analyses did not show the presence of norovirus , a highly contagious pathogen that often affects closed spaces such as ships, experts are anxiously awaiting the results of additional tests from specialized laboratories at the Bordeaux University Hospital. At the same time, researchers are keeping the possibility of mass food poisoning wide open, while they have made it clear from the outset that there is absolutely no connection with the dangerous hantavirus , wanting to calm the fears aroused by the recent, deadly outbreak of this virus on the MV Hondius cruise ship.
The scene in the city’s port remains peculiar and awkward. The ship, which had set sail from the Shetland Islands on May 6, making successive stops in Belfast and Liverpool, remains immobilized at the moment when it should have normally departed for Spain. Despite the imposition of quarantine, no draconian isolation measures have been taken on land, with the stranded passengers limited to photographing the Gironde region from the high decks, patiently waiting for the “green light” from the doctors who will decide the fate of their journey.
