Portugal: Many cases on a cruise ship bound for Lisbon for the Canary Islands

About 3,000 passengers of a cruise ship, mostly Germans, disembarked today in Lisbon, instead of continuing their journey to the Canary Islands, as several cases of Covid-19 were found among themselves.

The first passengers, who tested negative, started disembarking at dawn today and were transported by buses to Lisbon airport to return to their countries, said Diogo Vieira Branco, the head of the capital’s port authority.

The evacuation operation of the cruise ship AIDAnova is expected to be completed late this afternoon.

The ship, which docked Wednesday in Lisbon, bound for La Coru .a in northwestern Spain, was carrying 2,844 passengers and 1,353 crew members. According to his plan, he would continue to Madeira and then to the Canary Islands. However, after the first cases were identified, the company AIDA Cruises decided to stop the cruise, in order to “ensure the safety and health of the passengers and the crew”.

In total, 68 people tested positive for Covid-19 and 60 of them were crew members.

“They tried to find replacements for the crew and they did not find it. Therefore, we had no chance of sailing,” said one passenger, Ula Lingnau.

Those who tested positive are asymptomatic or have very mild symptoms and were quarantined in city hotels.

All passengers over the age of 12 and crew were vaccinated and tested twice before boarding the cruise ship, the company said.

Source: AMPE

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Source From: Capital

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