Nobody enjoys being sick (no, we’re not talking about a doona-day), we mean really sick. When you’re on holidays, that’s even worse.
However, we’ve heard the cases of hundreds of people getting ill on cruises due to the fast-spreading norovirus outbreaks from time to time.
Though this shouldn’t convince you to rule out cruising altogether. In actual fact, contracting norovirus on a ship is actually a lot smaller than you might think.
Norovirus outbreaks are just much higher-profile when they strike a cruise ship than when they strike, say, a hotel (where people come and go, and you never know if other guests got sick) or a theme park (where visitors disperse at day’s end) or that roadside hot-dog stand.
By contrast, on a ship the outbreak is confined to one small, highly populated space; everyone is in that same place for usually about seven days; and everyone uses the same medical center.
Therefore, outbreaks are found and reported more quickly on a cruise ship than on land, and cruise-ship outbreaks are highly publicised too, perhaps because there’s something so dramatic and riveting about hundreds of people trapped in a floating petri dish, with apparently little control over their fate.
Here’s some advice on precautions to take on a cruise ship:
- Wash your hands every opportunity you get.
- When shipboard staffers try to spray sanitiser into your hands on your way into the dining areas, let them.
- When you pass a sanitiser dispenser onboard, use it. But don’t think sanitiser is a replacement for soap and water. In advice about keeping hands clean on cruises, plain old soap and water disinfect better than alcohol-based products like Dettol.
- Pack antiseptic wipes.
- Avoid the ship’s public bathrooms and use the facilities in your cabin.