Cruise ship has no guaranteed port for sick passengers
The governor doesn’t want the ship to dock in Florida because the passengers will use ‘valuable resources.’
On Tuesday, authorities in Broward County, Florida – where the cruise ship with four dead and two in dire need of medical attention hopes to dock this week – said a plan presented by owner Carnival Corp. does not yet address all their concerns.
A representative for the U.S. Coast Guard said the Zaandam and an accompanying ship would not be allowed to enter U.S. waters without submitting “a complete plan for self-support of the medical issues occurring on board the vessels.”
At a meeting Tuesday, Coast Guard Capt. Jo- Ann Burdian said a “unified command” – a group of local, state and federal agencies – was looking to get concerns addressed and reach unanimous consent for the ships to dock.
“If not, I think that’s a question for a broader audience at the national government level,” she said.
President Trump said Tuesday evening that he will be speaking soon with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, about how to handle the Zaandam.
“There are people that are sick on the ship,”
Trump said, adding: “I’m going to do what’s right.
Not just for us, but for humanity.”
DeSantis has said that he does not want passengers from the ship to disembark in Florida, telling Fox News, “We cannot afford to have people who are not even Floridians dumped into South Florida using up those valuable resources.”
DeSantis’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but during a news conference earlier Tuesday, he said he had asked the Trump administration to get supplies to the ship instead of bringing people into the state.
“Just to drop people off at the place where we’re having the highest number of cases right now just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” he said.
Behind the scenes, the Florida governor has been lobbying the White House to keep the ship from disembarking in his state, according to White House aides. The situation has been discussed inside the National Security Council, which has discussed keeping all cruise ships with infected passengers three miles off the coast, officials said.
Trump has said in the past that he did not want to see cruise ships with sick passengers evacuated, even as his administration went forward with such plans.
But county commissioners in Broward said they hoped to see and take action on an updated plan soon – and several said they wanted to allow the ships to offload its passengers at Port Everglades so they could be sent home.
In an online update, the port said that if approved, Zaandam is expected to arrive late Wednesday or Thursday.
Some of that ship’s passengers who were not experiencing symptoms were transferred to another ship, Rotterdam, to allow more people to have rooms with outside access and to relieve the burden on the crew. As of Tuesday, according to Carnival’s chief maritime officer William Burke, there were “a couple” passengers on Rotterdam with flulike symptoms. Including crew, there are 1,048 people on Zaandam and 1,442 on Rotterdam.
“These people have been turned away from so many countries, one after the other; we are their last hope,” said Nan Rich, one of the nine county commissioners.
“What are we going to do? Let the ship go back out to sea and let it float around and let people die?”
Four people have died on the Holland America Line vessel; two of those people had confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, Burke said at the meeting. The cruise line had previously only confirmed that two people tested positive, but Burke told county officials that 11 people had been tested and nine were positive.
The company has tried to medically evacuate two passengers whose illness is beyond the ship’s capability to handle, but no country has agreed.
“We are coming to a place of last resort,” said Burke, a former Navy vice admiral. “I hope the two people we would like to medevac to Mexico will survive the couple-day transit.”
So far, the plan calls for arranging charter or charter-like flights out of Fort Lauderdale for passengers who need to be flown out of South Florida to international destinations and the West Coast, as well as transportation to the airport and passage through the airport so passengers don’t have contact with other travelers.
A representative for the U.S. Coast Guard said the Zaandam and an accompanying ship would not be allowed to enter U.S. waters without submitting “a complete plan for self-support of the medical issues occurring on board the vessels.”
At a meeting Tuesday, Coast Guard Capt. Jo- Ann Burdian said a “unified command” – a group of local, state and federal agencies – was looking to get concerns addressed and reach unanimous consent for the ships to dock.
“If not, I think that’s a question for a broader audience at the national government level,” she said.
President Trump said Tuesday evening that he will be speaking soon with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, about how to handle the Zaandam.
“There are people that are sick on the ship,”
Trump said, adding: “I’m going to do what’s right.
Not just for us, but for humanity.”
DeSantis has said that he does not want passengers from the ship to disembark in Florida, telling Fox News, “We cannot afford to have people who are not even Floridians dumped into South Florida using up those valuable resources.”
DeSantis’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but during a news conference earlier Tuesday, he said he had asked the Trump administration to get supplies to the ship instead of bringing people into the state.
“Just to drop people off at the place where we’re having the highest number of cases right now just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” he said.
Behind the scenes, the Florida governor has been lobbying the White House to keep the ship from disembarking in his state, according to White House aides. The situation has been discussed inside the National Security Council, which has discussed keeping all cruise ships with infected passengers three miles off the coast, officials said.
Trump has said in the past that he did not want to see cruise ships with sick passengers evacuated, even as his administration went forward with such plans.
But county commissioners in Broward said they hoped to see and take action on an updated plan soon – and several said they wanted to allow the ships to offload its passengers at Port Everglades so they could be sent home.
In an online update, the port said that if approved, Zaandam is expected to arrive late Wednesday or Thursday.
Some of that ship’s passengers who were not experiencing symptoms were transferred to another ship, Rotterdam, to allow more people to have rooms with outside access and to relieve the burden on the crew. As of Tuesday, according to Carnival’s chief maritime officer William Burke, there were “a couple” passengers on Rotterdam with flulike symptoms. Including crew, there are 1,048 people on Zaandam and 1,442 on Rotterdam.
“These people have been turned away from so many countries, one after the other; we are their last hope,” said Nan Rich, one of the nine county commissioners.
“What are we going to do? Let the ship go back out to sea and let it float around and let people die?”
Four people have died on the Holland America Line vessel; two of those people had confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, Burke said at the meeting. The cruise line had previously only confirmed that two people tested positive, but Burke told county officials that 11 people had been tested and nine were positive.
The company has tried to medically evacuate two passengers whose illness is beyond the ship’s capability to handle, but no country has agreed.
“We are coming to a place of last resort,” said Burke, a former Navy vice admiral. “I hope the two people we would like to medevac to Mexico will survive the couple-day transit.”
So far, the plan calls for arranging charter or charter-like flights out of Fort Lauderdale for passengers who need to be flown out of South Florida to international destinations and the West Coast, as well as transportation to the airport and passage through the airport so passengers don’t have contact with other travelers.