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Carolina Vásquez lost track of days and nights, unable to see sunlight while trapped for two weeks in the cabin of a windowless cruise ship when fever seized her body.
On the worst night of her encounter with COVID-19, the Chilean woman, a cook on Greg Mortimer’s ship, mustered the strength to take a cold shower fearing the worst: losing consciousness while isolated from others.
Vasquez, 36, and tens of thousands of other crew members have been trapped for weeks aboard dozens of cruise ships around the world, long after governments and cruise lines negotiated to disembark their passengers. Some got sick and died; Others have survived but are no longer paid.
Both national and local governments have prevented crews from landing to avoid new cases of COVID-19 in their territories. Some of the ships, including 20 in US waters, have seen infections and deaths among the crew. But most ships have had no confirmed cases.
“I never thought this would turn into a terrifying and tragic horror story,” Vasquez told the Associated Press in an interview via a cell phone app for Greg Mortimer, an Antarctic cruise ship floating off Uruguay. Thirty-six crew members have fallen ill on the ship.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last month that about 80,000 crew members remained on board ships off the US coast. USA After most of the passengers had disembarked. The Coast Guard said Friday that there were still 70,000 crew members on 102 ships anchored near or in U.S. ports or underway in U.S. waters.
The total number of stranded crew members worldwide was not immediately available. But thousands more are trapped on ships outside the US USA, Including Uruguay and Manila Bay, where 16 cruises wait to assess some 5,000 crew members before they are allowed to disembark.
As coronavirus cases and deaths increased worldwide, CDC and health officials in other countries have expanded the list of conditions that must be met before crews can disembark.
Cruise companies must take each crew member directly home in a charter plane or private car without using rental vehicles or taxis. To complicate that mission, the CDC requires that company executives accept criminal penalties if the crew members fail to obey orders from health authorities to avoid public transportation and restaurants on their way home.
“The criminal penalties gave us (and our attorneys) a break,” Royal Caribbean International President and CEO Michael Bayley wrote in a letter to crew members earlier this week, but added that executives The company finally agreed to sign.
Melinda Mann, 25, youth program manager for Holland America, spent more than 50 days without stepping on dry land before finally disembarking from the Koningsdam ship in Los Angeles on Friday. Before being transferred to Koningsdam, last week she tried to get off another ship with other members of the American crew, but the ship’s security guards detained them.
For 21 hours a day, Mann was kept in seclusion in a 150-square-foot cruise cabin that is smaller than her room at her Midland, Georgia home. He read 30 books and could only leave his room three times a day to walk around the ship. His contract ended on April 18, so he was not paid for weeks.
“Keeping me in captivity for so long is absolutely ridiculous,” Mann said in a phone interview.
Earlier this week in Nassau, Bahamas, Canadian crew members aboard the Emerald Princess were told to prepare to fly home on a charter plane. But in the end, the Bahamian government did not allow the ship to dock.
Leah Prasad’s husband is among the stranded crew members. Prasad said she has spent hours tracking government agencies to help her husband, a maitre d ‘hotel for Carnival.
“He’s getting discouraged. He’s trapped in a cabin, “said Prasad. “It is not good for your mental health.”
Angela Savard, a spokeswoman for Canada’s foreign affairs, said the government was continuing to explore options for bringing Canadians home.
For those aboard the Greg Mortimer in Montevideo, Uruguay, despair is settling in, crew members told the AP.
The Antarctic cruise ship set sail from Argentina on March 15, after a pandemic had already been declared. The ship’s doctor, Dr. Mauricio Usme, said that when the first passenger fell ill on March 22, the captain, the cruise operator and the owners pressured him to modify the health conditions that had to be met in order for the boat was admitted. in ports.
Usme refused. The ship anchored in the port of Montevideo on March 27. More than half of its passengers and crew tested positive for the coronavirus. Finally, on April 10, 127 passengers, including some infected, were able to disembark and fly home to Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada and Europe. Crew members were told to remain on board.
The doctor was hospitalized in an intensive care unit in Montevideo, along with a member of the Philippine crew, who later died.
“People are exhausted and mentally exhausted,” said Usme, now recovered and back on the Greg Mortimer. “It is a complex situation. You feel very vulnerable and at imminent risk of death.”
CMI, the Miami-based company that manages the boat, said it has been “unable to obtain the necessary permits” to allow crew members of 22 nationalities to go home, but said they were all still under contract. receiving payment.
Marvin Paz Medina, a Honduran who works as a warehouseman for the ship, sent a video to the AP of his small cabin of about 70 square feet, where he has been confined for more than 35 days. “It’s hard to be locked up all day, looking at the same four walls,” he said.
Paz Medina says her children continue to ask her when she will return home, but she has no answer.
“We are trapped, feeling this anxiety that at any moment we can become seriously ill,” said Paz Medina. “We don’t want this anymore. We want to go home. ”
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