Alleged Onboard COVID Infections Force Caribbean Princess Cruise Ship To Cancel Canadian Stops

The Caribbean Princess cruise ship is said to have “lots of COVID-19” onboard, according to a Canadian passenger. The outbreak has caused it to cancel its scheduled stops in both Victoria and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, this week.

The passenger, Ally Carol, from Richmond, British Columbia, Canada, told the Times Colonist, “The whole 12th floor is an isolation ward.”

Carol boarded the ship in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with her partner in late March for a 19-day cruise to Canada and had planned to return home on April 7, but had to book a flight from San Francisco after the cruise was unexpectedly cut short, according to the news outlet.

“There are active cases in cabins throughout the ship as well, and they [aren’t telling] anyone," Carol told the Times Colonist. “They say it is a privacy issue and they can’t share with anyone, but medical teams in protective gear are seen going to rooms.”

The ship was supposed to be the first cruise ship to arrive in Canada on Wednesday at Ogden Point in Victoria since the pandemic began back in 2020.

On the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's cruise ship status dashboard, the Caribbean Princess is listed as having an “orange status,” meaning there are enough COVID cases aboard the ship to meet the threshold for an agency investigation. The CDC threshold is at least 0.3% of passengers and crew to have tested positive to warrant an investigation.

According to the Times Colonist, the Caribbean Princess ship had 1,600 passengers on board.

Princess Cruises announced in a statement obtained by the news outlet that the Canadian leg of the sailing would be canceled late Friday, saying that it made the “difficult decision to allow added time to prepare for dry dock” near Portland, Oregon.

“This additional time will help assure the vessel is up to our highest standards in advance of the upcoming busy summer season,” Princess Cruises said.

It was unclear at the time of writing why the cruise line prepared for dry-docking if there were alleged COVID cases onboard the ship.

Carol told the Times Colonist, “So knowing they have COVID on the ship, instead of doing the responsible thing and testing all the guests going back to Canada, they are just disembarking all of us and sending us home, putting us in planes next to unsuspecting members of the public, instead of responsibly checking to see who caught COVID on their ship.”

Carol and her partner both tested negative for COVID-19 on Sunday.

The news of the COVID cases onboard the ship comes as the CDC dropped cruise ship travel from its travel advisory list last week.