Royal Caribbean's Grandeur of the Seas
ST. CROIX — Royal Caribbean Cruise Line’s Grandeur of the Seas has canceled its scheduled visit to Frederiksted, St. Croix on February 12, announced the Virgin Islands Port Authority.
V.I.P.A. said its marine office received the cancelation today, which cited medical reasons for the ship’s change in its itinerary. The release did not say what those medical reasons were that caused the cruise line to cancel the call.
Countries around the world have been taking extraordinary measures to safeguard against the new coronavirus that continues to wreak havoc in China. A cruise ship quarantined in Japan, the Diamond Princess, is said to have 135 passengers aboard with the coronavirus, according to the Wall Street Journal. And multiple Caribbean destinations, among them St. Lucia and Dominica, have turned away cruise ships as a precautionary measure following confirmed reports of gastroenteritis outbreaks on the ships.
According to The New York Times, citing China's National Health Commission, 97 people died from the coronavirus on Sunday, a new daily record since the virus was first detected in December. The death toll is now 908 people, which surpasses the toll from the SARS epidemic of 2002-03, according to official data.
The number of confirmed infections in the country rose to 40,171, and 3,062 new cases were recorded in the preceding 24 hours, most of them in Hubei Province. A United States citizen died from the coronavirus in Wuhan, the provincial capital, American officials said on Saturday, the Times said.
The SARS epidemic, which also began in China, killed 774 people worldwide. There have been only two confirmed deaths from the new coronavirus outside mainland China: one in Hong Kong and one in the Philippines.
The Grandeur of the Seas is a Vision-class ship with a capacity of 2,446 passengers and 760 crew, the Port Authority said.
The revised cruise ship schedule for St. Croix reflecting the cancelation is available on the Seaports section of VIPA’s website www.viport.com.
