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100
on cruise ship in Halifax
sick with norovirus
By JOHN GILLIS Health Reporter
Fri. Oct 24 - 4:55 PM
Source of Article: http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/9009050.html
More than 100 passengers and crew on a cruise ship that docked in Halifax on Friday have
been sickened by a bug believed to be norovirus.
The Caribbean Princess arrived in the city as part of a seven-day cruise
originating in New York,
with almost 3,100 passengers and more than 1,100 crew aboard.
Princess Cruises, the company operating the tour, said in a written statement
that extra sanitation procedures were put into practice as soon as a
higher-than-usual number of sick passengers was
reported. Ill passengers are isolated in their cabins until they are
non-contagious.
Norovirus is often described as the stomach equivalent of the common cold.
It typically causes vomiting and diarrhea and usually lasts one or two days.
Most people who get it recover completely but complications like dehydration
can occur in the very young and the elderly.
There is no treatment for norovirus beyond rest and
fluids, but people with symptoms of the bug are highly infectious.
Princess Cruises said the virus, which regularly circulates around North
America and the United
Kingdom, was probably brought aboard
inadvertently by a passenger.
Staff from the Halifax Port Authority and Pier 21 wouldn’t comment Friday
afternoon, but gift shop clerks and tour operators around the cruise ship
pavilion were seen earlier in the day being given plastic gloves and barf
bags as a precaution.
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