Sorry about that, Steve; I don't subscribe to them, but I simply dismiss the request for cash :-) Anyhow, here's the writcle:
With passengers falling ill, the ship was denied a port by country after country.
By Michael Smith, Drake Bennett, and K. Oanh Ha
40:48
On March 28 the MS Zaandam sat at anchor off the coast of Panama, its sun decks and swimming pools deserted, the lounges and casino quiet. For the seventh straight day, passengers were confined to their cabins with one of the few things cruises endeavor not to abundantly provide: time alone with dark thoughts. Crew members moved through the narrow hallways delivering meals and medication. Periodically, a doctor or nurse brought another passenger to the Zaandam’s small medical center. As its reception area filled, coughing patients stood in the corridor.
The previous day Captain Ane Smit had come over the intercom and announced what most of his listeners already suspected: Covid-19 was on the ship. Two people had tested positive so far, and four passengers had died. (One of those deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, would turn out not to be from the coronavirus.) In addition, because the ship was carrying the disease, its request to pass through the Panama Canal into the Caribbean had been denied. As Smit made his announcement, 53 passengers and 85 crew members were sick. The ship had been in limbo for almost two weeks, but until now it had at least been moving—up the entire Pacific coast of South America as nation after nation refused to let the passengers ashore. Now it had come to rest. A small Panamanian patrol boat loitered nearby.
The Holland America Line cruise ship MS Zaandam near Panama City.
▲ The Zaandam waits off the coast of Panama. Only after an international pressure campaign was the ship granted permission to transit the canal.
Photographer: Erick Marciscano/Reuters
Among the Zaandam’s 1,200 passengers were two Americans from Missouri. Sitting in their cabin, looking out their sealed porthole at Panama City’s palisade of skyscrapers, Clive and Sharon Hutton found themselves veering from hope to dread—and then regret. A few hundred yards away, the Huttons could see the MS Rotterdam, which had arrived two days earlier. It was a foot shorter than the Zaandam, at 780 feet, but otherwise almost identical—both vessels had the navy blue hull, teak decks, and white superstructure of a Holland America Line ship. The Huttons watched as two orange-and-white tenders shuttled between the ships. The covered boats were bringing over much-needed protective gear and Covid tests, along with doctors, nurses, and crew members who’d volunteered to reinforce their colleagues on the Zaandam. And they were carrying away passengers deemed Covid-free. With each trip, they were separating more of the healthy from the unwell.
That morning, medical personnel in masks, gloves, and gowns had appeared at the Huttons’ cabin on the Dolphin Deck to take their temperatures and have them fill out a questionnaire. Passengers who passed this cursory check were eligible to transfer to the Rotterdam. As far as the couple knew, they’d passed—both were fever-free and felt fine, and people over age 70, as they were, were being given priority. Then, hours later, the medical staff came back and told them to unpack. Lance, as everyone called him, had divulged on his questionnaire that he used a CPAP machine, a device to treat sleep apnea. For reasons he couldn’t understand, that was disqualifying. They had to remain on “the sick ship,” as Lance had started calling it.
“I’m sure many people on board felt the same. If they’d had a chance, they would have gotten out of it”
The Huttons, from the small town of Foristell, had bought their tickets many months in advance. They’d fly to Buenos Aires, spend a couple days in the city, then set sail down the east coast of South America, around Cape Horn, and back up the other side. And, because they had sprung for the extended 31-day option, they’d continue after the first leg ended in San Antonio, Chile, all the way up to the Panama Canal and on to Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The capstone for Lance would be an excursion to Machu Picchu, the 15th century Incan ruin in the Peruvian Andes.
In the weeks before their departure, Lance had monitored the spread of the coronavirus and begun to worry about the trip. He’d followed the cruise ship outbreaks—first on the Diamond Princess in February and then on the Grand Princess days before his own voyage. Princess Cruises, like Holland America, is part of the giant cruise operator Carnival Corp. At 80 and 79 years old, respectively, he and Sharon were squarely in the at-risk population for Covid-19. Lance had wanted to cancel, but Holland America sent him an email on Feb. 26 specifying that refunds were limited to customers who could prove they’d had contact with someone who had the virus or had recently traveled to China. On March 5 he checked again, but the policy hadn’t changed. (On March 6, the day before the Zaandam’s passengers began boarding, Holland America did loosen its cancellation policy. Lance never learned of it.)
And so the couple had gone ahead with the trip. Throwing away $20,000 just felt too extravagant to a retired school superintendent. “I’m sure many people on board felt the same,” he said, speaking by phone as the ship sat in Panama Bay. “If they’d had a chance, they would have gotten out of it.” Now the Huttons just wanted to get home. Word of the deaths had rattled the couple. Lance was particularly worried about Sharon, his wife of 56 years. She had bronchiectasis, a chronic condition that made her susceptible to airway infections. And he’d lost faith in the company that, he now painfully realized, he’d trusted with their lives. “I just don’t think they thought about this very well,” he said. “That’s the only complaint I have.”
By the time the Zaandam made it to port on April 2, its passengers would be some of the only cruisers left on Earth. Some would still be very sick, and not all of them would survive. Two months later, the cruise industry remains shut down and economically staggered—a no-sail order issued by the CDC six days after the Zaandam’s departure has since been renewed through the end of July. But Carnival and Royal Caribbean International, the industry’s two dominant players, tentatively plan to start cruising again on Aug. 1. If the industry keeps to this timeline, ships will be departing and moving thousands from port to port while Covid clusters still burn around the world and a vaccine remains notional. To help customers swallow any misgivings, Carnival has offered rates as low as $28 a day, including food.