1st Cruise Since March Returns to Port After Passenger Tests Positive for COVID-19

The first cruise ship to sail since the pandemic began is returning to port after someone on board tested positive for COVID-19. Just four days into the Caribbean cruise on the Sea Dream 1, passengers heard the alert: “We have one or more COVID patients on board. We therefore kindly request all of you to return to your state rooms.”

“People went back to their rooms and that’s where I’ve been and where everybody else has been for the last almost 24 hours,” travel reporter Gene Sloan told Inside Edition. He’s among the 119 passengers and crew now in quarantine on the ship.

As Inside Edition interviewed Sloan, crew members in hazmat suits came into his cabin to take his temperature.

Although there was rigorous testing and sanitizing before the cruise ship left Barbados, passengers were not required to wear masks until two days into the trip.

“When I first walked up the gangplank, I was wearing a mask, other passengers were wearing masks, and the crew said, 'Welcome on board, and now you can take your mask off. We're a COVID-free zone,'” Sloan said.

The outbreak is a blow to the entire cruise industry, which is now attempting to resume operations after so many months in complete shutdown.

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