Troubled waters: Cruise ships with sick on board approaching Port Everglades

An FIU-trained nurse who serves as a Broward County commissioner believes that two beleaguered cruise ships with more than 1,200 passengers and nearly 600 crewmembers on board—one of which is carrying known coronavirus sufferers—must be allowed to dock in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday.

Barbara Sharief, a two-time alumna and the former mayor of Broward County, on Tuesday participated in commission meetings and open discussions about the two vessels, the fate of which has garnered international attention.

Among commissioners’ biggest concerns, Sharief said, were the possibility of increased spread of COVID-19 as result of passengers and crew disembarking and the potential burden on the local health care system.

“The first thing is that they not utilize our most precious resource, which is the Broward health care system,” Sharief said. Broward has the second highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Florida (the state health department reported 1,232 in the county as of April 1), and conserving resources in the continuing battle against the virus is a priority.

The affected ships are in the Holland America line owned by Carnival Corp. The two began travelling together when cases of infection on board one were first reported. Some healthy passengers from the infected ship then moved to accommodations in the other.

A total of nine people have tested positive for COVID-19, and another two have died from it. Some news reports have quoted higher numbers for both infections and deaths, but Sharief referred to documentation provided by the cruise line. (Of two additional deaths, one was attributed to a heart attack and a second to pre-existing health conditions.) The cases of other passengers who had earlier presented with respiratory illnesses and since recovered, according to the cruise line, are believed attributable to influenza or norovirus, which in the elderly population at this time of year is not unexpected, Sharief added.

“In summary, 98 percent of the guests are well or recovered from an illness,” she read from the cruise line’s report. “It is less of a problem” than widely believed, Sharief said, even as she recognized “There’s a lot of panic out there.”

Both ships are equipped with ventilators and medicine as well as a combined six doctors and eight nurses. The cruise line report stated that no passenger required use of a ventilator at the time of the report.

It was expected that commissioners on Tuesday would formally vote on a decision to allow or turn away the ships. That vote was to be shared with the unified command, a group of officials drawn from the CDC, Broward Health Department and elsewhere who will ultimately make the final decision.

In lieu of a vote, however, each individual commissioner shared his or her opinion with the representative of the unified command who was present at the meeting. Sharief added that many of her colleagues shared her belief that the vessels should be allowed to dock.

The ships were first turned away from Chile, then Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Colombia and Mexico. Other places that wouldn’t help: Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Martinique, Guadalupe Island and Barbados. One cruise originated in Argentina and was supposed to end in Chile on March 7. The other was to conclude at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale on April 7.

Carnival has put in place a plan for getting passengers and crew home, although it appears some commissioners were looking for more detail. More than 300 live in the United States, with the rest coming from an additional 13 countries. The cruise line has said it will charter buses and planes that would move all individuals quickly out of the area, Sharief said. The ill were to remain quarantined on board with the cruise line’s medical team attending until deemed recovered and safe to trvel per CDC guidelines.

Sharief cautioned the public to regard the passengers with compassion. Most, she said, are elderly and taking a “once-in-a-lifetime trip” that no one could have predicted would end so badly.

The founder and owner of of a home-health company that employs 600 professionals, Sharief has more than 28 years in the nursing profession. She has consulted with the state on the appropriate patient-to-staff ratio needed for round-the-clock care of those on ventilators. She has spent the past few weeks fielding the concerns of constituents worried about job losses and an inability to pay rent even as she works to make available more social services to low-income families.