Fort Lauderdale mayor not ready to accept the coronavirus-hit Zaandam at Port Everglades
A Holland America cruise ship with four deaths, two COVID-19 cases and 179 people sick with flu-like symptoms is headed for Port Everglades in Broward County.
On Sunday, Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis issued a hard not-in-my-constituents’-backyard statement.
“Until I am fully briefed by the Trump administration, and I’m comfortable with their plans, I cannot support the Zaandam docking in my community,” Trantalis said.
The Zaandam, the cruise ship hit by the coronavirus, and the Rotterdam, which took on passengers from the Zaandam, both have been allowed to pass through the Panama Canal. The Panamanian government gave Carnival Corporation-owned Holland America Line permission Saturday with the restriction that nobody from the Zaandam put a foot on the ground in Panama, Reuters reported. Next stop: Port Everglades.
Among those left on the Zaandam are 69 passengers and 110 crew with flu-like symptoms, a spokesperson for Holland America Erik Elvejord said Sunday.
The passengers who died were from the U.S., Sweden, Holland and Great Britain. Elvejord said the cause of death is not confirmed.
“We do not do autopsies on board our ships,” he said via email. “Out of respect for the family members and HIPPA regulations, we are not able to comment any further.”
One passenger died March 23, two Thursday, and one Friday. The company notified passengers of the deaths Friday.
Several crew members on the Rotterdam are self-isolating in their cabins because they fear infection from the exposed Zaandam guests who transferred to their ship, a worker said via email. The company used only temperature checks to ensure those who transferred were virus-free, however not all who are infected develop a fever.
Elvejord said he does not know how many crew members are self-isolating. “But each day over the last few, crew are coming back after seeing the humanitarian side and how our preventive processes and procedures are working,” he said via email.
It would take the ship about three days to reach Florida’s coast, according to Ellen Kennedy, a spokesperson for the Broward County-run Port Everglades.
“Holland American must then submit a plan prior to arrival that addresses a long list of Unified Command requirements for entry into a Port,” Kennedy said in a statement Sunday.
In his Sunday afternoon statement, Trantalis called the company’s plan to come to Port Everglades, “deeply troubling.”. Broward County has 838 positive cases as of Sunday morning’s update from the state of Florida, second most in the state behind neighboring Miami-Dade County, and has had 11 deaths.
“The problem here is that Port Everglades sits in the very middle of a vast urban area,” he said. “There are neighborhoods to the north, south and west of the port.”
Trantalis suggested the Zaandam dock at a Navy base somewhere else on the East Coast, which would provide a controlled setting.
If the ship is to come to Port Everglades, Trantalis said he wants the same protocols followed for the Grand Princesss cruise ship quarantine and evacuation in Oakland, California in early March.
Trantalis said he wanted:
▪ “Stringent separation procedures.”
▪ Foreign citizens get triaged quickly and put on planes home.
▪ “Sick Americans taken to hospitals “not already facing the possibility of being overwhelmed.”
▪ Healthy Americans to be quarantined.
Broward Commissioner Mark Bogen suggested on Twitter that passengers be taken via buses to Homestead Air Force Base in Miami-Dade County.
Fellow commissioner Barbara Sharief said transferring passengers to the second ship was the right decision. “The longer passengers stay aboard the Zaandam without care/testing the more the virus will spread,” she tweeted. “Moving well passengers to the Rotterdam was the right move Americans on those ships must come home. We must humanely treat sick passengers & quarantine appropriately.”
This story was originally published March 29, 2020 at 5:10 PM.
