Coast Guard blocks Coral Princess from docking in Port Everglades until it has a plan
The Coral Princess — with at least a dozen COVID-infected people on board — will not be docking in Port Everglades on Saturday after all.
The ship’s parent company, Carnival Corp., informed Port Everglades of the decision early Friday. Later in the day, the Coast Guard issued an order blocking the ship from entering U.S. territorial waters until it comes up with an approved plan for disembarking and hospitalizing people on board.
“Based on the hazardous conditions on board your vessel, I have determined your vessel poses an unacceptable risk of medical emergency due to the inherent and high probability of transmission of COVID-19 aboard, which presents a risk to the safety of the personnel aboard your vessel, first responders and ports within the Seventh District,” the Coast Guard said.
Princess Cruises spokeswoman Negin Kamali said the company is still working on how and when the Coral Princess will drop off passengers.
“Arrival and disembarkation plans for Coral Princess are being formalized and under review by numerous local officials,” she wrote in an email.
Broward County Mayor Dale Holness said Thursday that the company did not yet have an approved plan for docking.
The two cruise ships currently docked at Port Everglades — Holland America Line’s Zaandam and Rotterdam — didn’t have final plans until nearly the last moment they docked. The ships finally docked Thursday evening after 12 days at sea and much back-and-forth between political leaders about whether to allow the ships at all.
During a Friday evening press conference, President Donald Trump said he made the final call: “We could have let them float aimlessly into the ocean looking for port, as they’ve been doing for a long time. And I made the decision we had to take them in.”
According to Erik Elvejord, spokesman for Holland America Line, the ships are expected to remain in port unloading passengers until Saturday. No departure time has been set.
“They will then position offshore where guests who still have symptoms will remain on board to disembark at a later date after meeting the CDC guidelines for being fit to travel,” he said.
Broward Health Medical Center, which took in 10 sick people, said some are in critical condition and others are in fair condition. Larkin Community Hospital in Miami-Dade did not respond to an immediate request about the status of its four cruise patients.
Princess Cruises’ Coral Princess is currently near Puerto Rico, where it just received a resupply from sister ship Regal Princess. There are 1,898 people on the ship, including 1,020 passengers and 878 crew.
Princess Cruises said in a statement Thursday that seven passengers and five crew members tested positive after the ship dropped off samples in Barbados on March 31. The ship has been sailing toward Florida since Argentina permitted only Argentine citizens to disembark in Buenos Aires on March 19.
California Rep. Jackie Speier wrote a letter to President Trump on Friday asking that the ship be allowed to dock and her sick constituents on board be hospitalized on land.
“If we do not act quickly, this dangerous situation may result in further transmission and loss of life as we have tragically witnessed on the Zaandam and Rotterdam cruise ships,” she wrote.
Four people died aboard the Zaandam cruise ship.
One of those COVID-positive passengers on the Coral Princess is 71-year-old Wilson Maa, Jason Chien’s father-in-law. Chien told the Miami Herald that Maa, who is from the San Francisco Bay Area, started feeling sick on Saturday. At first, he thought the nausea was seasickness, but a test confirmed it was COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus.
Ship officials tested people onboard and dropped off the tests in Barbados on March 31, when passengers were asked to isolate in their cabins. Chien said healthy passengers were moved to cabins on the upper deck and ill patients like his in-laws stayed on lower levels.
Chien said his mother-in-law, Toyling Maa, has developed a cough and fever, leaving him “really scared and concerned.”
“I just want them to be able to get the medical care that they need, and to be able to dock and get home safely,” he said.
The monthlong voyage began March 5 in San Antonio, Chile. On March 11, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic, and ports stopped allowing Coral Princess passengers on land. Passengers were barred in Argentina and Uruguay, where the ship resupplied and headed north to its final destination — Port Everglades.
McClatchy reporter Francesca Chambers contributed to this report.
This story was originally published April 3, 2020 at 2:12 PM.
