After 1 death and calls for help, Miami-Dade pulls more sick passengers off Coral Princess
Family members of sick passengers stuck on board the Coral Princess at PortMiami began pleading early Sunday for urgent help in getting their loved ones off the cruise ship and into the hospital.
By late in the day, their calls were answered. After the Saturday night death of a passenger who was left off an initial emergency evacuation, Miami-Dade County sent in reinforcements. Miami-Dade’s Jackson hospital system sent a team to assess severely ill Coral Princess passengers and county paramedics were dispatched to the port to assist, said Myriam Marquez, communications director for Mayor Carlos Gimenez.
“The mayor has been very clear. We want to help as much as we can,” Marquez said. “But we also don’t want to overwhelm the system.”
By Sunday evening, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue spokesperson Erika Benitez reported the county had evacuated eight people to Jackson Memorial and Larkin hospitals. The mayor’s office said in a statement that fire rescue replaced the ship’s oxygen cylinders, which were “critically low.”
The additional medical aid arrived in the afternoon. Shortly after 4 p.m. county ambulances and fire trucks were seen on the pier outside the cruise ship and the director of the port, Juan Kuryla, stood by on the phone.
The scramble complicated Miami-Dade’s original plan for the Carnival Corporation-owned ship, which was allowed to dock at PortMiami Saturday with 12 COVID-19 cases on board. The company planned to remove people deemed critically ill that night, allow healthy passengers to leave Sunday, and leave dozens of other sick crew and passengers aboard under quarantine for treatment by the ship’s medical crew.
On Saturday, five people were transferred to hospitals in Miami and Tampa. A sixth person, Wilson Maa, 71, waited nearly five hours on board the ship Saturday evening before an ambulance responded to his family’s desperate calls for a rescue — including efforts they described to have 911 send help. Maa died later that night at Larkin Community Hospital in Hialeah.
A spokesperson for the county-owned port, Andria Muniz-Amador, said she was in touch with Carnival Corp. shortly after the Miami Herald inquired about Maa’s fate aboard the Princess on Saturday evening. “We were on the phone immediately, letting Carnival know we were alarmed,” Muniz-Amador said. She said the company described Maa as not in immediate danger. “That’s what I kept hearing from the line: That he was stable.”
Maa was the third Coral Princess passenger to die after two passed away on the ship Friday evening. On Sunday morning, more families pleaded with the cruise company and local authorities to get their loved ones off the ship and into hospitals.
Prior to the ship’s arrival, Carnival Corp., which owns Princess Cruises, planned to immediately medically evacuate six Coral Princess passengers using private ambulances, according to an agreement between the company and Miami-Dade County provided to the Herald, and estimated up to six more passengers may need to be hospitalized.
The agreement shows the company had secured four hospital beds at Larkin Community Hospital and confirmed more than 24 beds were available between Larkin, St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa, and AdventHealth Orlando.
Two passengers were evacuated to Larkin Saturday and three to St. Joseph’s.
Princess Cruises did not respond to requests for comment about why Maa had to wait so long to be evacuated on Saturday, despite those plans. Marquez, the Gimenez spokeswoman, said Miami-Dade was not told there was an issue with available beds for the ship. “We were never told they could not handle that,” she said.
Maa’s death sparked a demand by a Miami congresswoman for a local investigation into the circumstances that led him to be kept aboard while other passengers were removed Saturday. “It’s devastating and exasperating that we will never know if Mr. Maa’s death could have been prevented with a swift and urgent medical response that this situation deserved,” Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, D-Miami, said in a statement.
Gimenez, who oversees the port and told reporters he didn’t want to see critically ill Princess passengers trapped at sea, is running in the Republican primary to challenge Mucarsel-Powell in November.
The circumstances of Maa’s remaining on the Coral Princess, and the rules governing the removal of other passengers, remain hazy. The docking agreement includes discrepancies from what the company has said publicly about the situation on board. It says six passengers and six crew members tested positive for COVID-19; the company said Thursday that seven passengers and five crew members tested positive.
The agreement says the ship has four doctors, four nurses and three ventilators on board.
One of the ship’s doctors told Maa’s family Saturday night that Toyling Maa, Wilson’s wife, might need to be hospitalized as well at some point.
On Sunday morning, their daughter, Julie Maa, begged the company, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, a private ambulance company, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Florida’s Surgeon General to help get her mom to the hospital. By 5:00 p.m., Maa’s family said Toyling had made it to a Miami-Dade hospital.
Other passengers feared similar wait times could put them in a dangerous situation.
Leonor Stricker said her in-laws, who are both sick, were separated Saturday on board the Coral Princess. Her mother-in-law, Cathie Bryan, who tested positive for COVID-19, doesn’t have a phone charger and Stricker had not been able to get in touch with her.
“We are worried that they are not getting the needed medical treatment and assessments on board,” Sticker said.
At 5 p.m., Stricker said Cathie was hospitalized.
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Paul Nahm said his parents, 72-year-old Grace Nahm and 71-year-old Peter Nahm, didn’t receive medical attention on board from Friday until Sunday night. He reached someone at Princess Cruises Sunday afternoon, after bombarding the company with tweets and phone calls.
Paul said his father was taken to the hospital late Sunday night, but his mother had yet to be medically checked.
Peter has COVID-19 and Grace is awaiting test results but has a fever and a cough. On Friday, Paul said a crew member tried to separate his parents and said if they didn’t agree to move to different rooms they’d have to sign a waiver releasing the ship from providing them medical care.
The couple did not separate and were not provided a waiver to sign.
“Take them to staterooms where they can be cared for. Do not bully them, please,” Paul wrote in a Twitter direct message to a Princess representative.
Princess Cruises said in a statement that it is working on charter flights for the nearly 1,000 healthy passengers — two of which were scheduled to leave Miami International Airport on Sunday. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now requiring cruise passengers to travel by charter flight, not commercial flight, creating delays in the company’s repatriation plans.
This story was originally published April 5, 2020 at 1:20 PM.
