Despite a positive COVID-19 test from a passenger who had disembarked days earlier, thousands of people were allowed to leave a cruise ship in Miami Sunday without undergoing medical screening.
The former passenger got off the MSC Meraviglia in Miami on March 8 after an eight-day Caribbean cruise, leaving 103 passengers and the ship’s crew aboard for the next voyage. Four days later, after the ship had sailed with thousands of additional new passengers aboard, the Public Health Agency of Canada informed Broward-based MSC Cruises that the former passenger had tested positive.
Once it received the result, the company said it isolated seven crew members who had been in close contact with the passenger in individual cabins. But instead of holding the ship off the Florida coast and testing people on board for the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19, MSC said U.S. health authorities cleared it to dock Sunday and disembark passengers as normal.
Read more from our news partners at the Miami Herald
