Coronavirus quarantine turned her 2-week cruise into a monthlong ‘adventure’
For the better part of two weeks, Sharon Bell’s cruise aboard the Grand Princess was pretty much like most of the other 20 or so cruises she’s taken over the years.
Departing San Francisco on Feb. 21 and with port stops in Kauai, Maui, Honolulu and Hilo, Bell and her traveling companion enjoyed their 15-day Hawaii cruise to and from San Francisco. Like many passengers, they had the virtual run of the ship, from their balcony cabin to dining rooms, showrooms, shops and more – right up until Day 13, when the ship was on its way to its final port of call in Ensenada, Mexico.
That’s when Princess Cruises notified guests that a passenger who had been on the ship’s previous cruise to Mexico had died from COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
For the next six days extending several days beyond when they were supposed to disembark, Bell – who lives in Easton just south of Fresno — and other passengers were confined to their cabins to prevent spreading the virus that was only just starting to wreak havoc in the U.S. And then began another two-week period of quarantine at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego as a further precaution against passengers bringing the virus back to their hometowns.
“What happened is that the ship had come from Mexico before it went to Hawaii, and there were about 60 people on there who did back to back cruises,” Bell told The Bee. “When they found out one guy died who was on the Mexican cruise, they tested all of those people, and two tested positive. Then they tested the crew, and something like 19 of them tested positive.”
The Grand Princess accommodates 2,600 passengers and has a crew of more than 1,100. The ship spent the next several days – from March 5 to March 8 – roaming about 20 miles off the California coast outside of San Francisco as U.S. health officials pondered how to handle the infected passengers and those who had been exposed to the virus.
At age 80, Bell – who retired in 2002 from her job as an assessment technician with the Fresno County Assessor’s Office – is among the segment of the population that has been identified as particularly susceptible to COVID-19 – seniors over the age of 65. And she’d caught a cold during the trip, so had a cough that immediately captured the attention of health officers when she disembarked in Oakland.
“But I’m just fine. I’ve got the paper now that says I’m negative,” Bell said with a laugh during a telephone interview this week.
Published news accounts indicated that since the Hawaii cruise ended, two passengers and one crew member have died, while 103 other people who were aboard the ship have tested positive.
“We lucked out,” Bell said. “I’ve always been kind of healthy. Now when they talk about ‘the elderly,’ though, that’s me, but I don’t feel elderly most of the time.”
Bell said that while there was a level of concern among passengers, she didn’t sense any panic.
“Of course we really couldn’t talk to anyone else because we were confined to our cabins … but they did let us order margaritas, so that was pretty good,” Bell said. “Luckily we had a balcony, so we weren’t exactly stuck inside.”
“Although when we were out on the balcony, we’d see others out on their balconies, too, so we’d say ‘Hi’ to each other,” she added.
Two more weeks of quarantine
In an environment for which social distancing called for maintaining six feet of distance between people, “they jammed us onto two buses and took us to the Oakland Airport,” Bell said. “Then they put on this old, old airplane. Everyone was jammed in there like sardines.”
“I’m short, but even I was uncomfortable; I was miserable for two hours,” she said of the flight to San Diego.
As the passengers got off the plane, they were screened by having their temperatures taken and questioned about any cold or flu symptoms. “I’d already come down with a cold, so of course I was coughing,” Bell said. She and some other passengers were hustled to a van and taken to a medical building for physical exams before they were allowed to settle in for another two weeks of isolation.
“It was actually nice,” she said of the “consolidated bachelor quarters” where she and her friend were lodged. “It was a suite, with a living room, a couch, chairs and table and a little mini kitchen.”
The passengers were confined to their rooms for the first 48 hours; after that, they could venture outside with masks. Medics took their temperature twice a day, and meals were delivered three times a day.
“They changed caterers after the first week, so the food was much better after that,” Bell said. “And they always had snacks for us to get if we wanted them.”
Bell said she typically tries to go on cruises twice a year, and the Grand Princess ordeal has not soured her on taking more trips in the future. She’s already booked a cruise in the fall to Alaska, if the cruise industry is back up and running by that time.
“We were lucky. We stayed healthy and we were treated well, so it really wasn’t a bad experience,” she said. “It’s just too bad I had to wait until I was 80 years old to have a real adventure.”
Bell and her friend weren’t the only local residents to quarantine at Miramar after the Hawaii cruise. Paula and Tom Yost of Fresno were also sent to Miramar when they disembarked from the Grand Princess.
Now come the lawsuits
In the central San Joaquin Valley, two men who sailed aboard the Grand Princess on its Mexican cruise – one from Madera County, the other from Fresno County – were the first two confirmed COVID-19 cases in the central San Joaquin Valley.
A group of passengers from northern California filed a lawsuit against Princess Cruises on April 9, alleging that the company was negligent by not disinfecting the ship after the Mexican cruise, during which a man from Placer County reportedly showed respiratory symptoms. That passenger died at the end of February, after returning to Placer County, and was the first California death attributed to COVID-19.
The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in San Francisco, alleges that passengers from the Mexico cruise who stayed aboard for the Hawaii trip were alerted to their potential exposure on Feb. 25, four days into the cruise. But other passengers on the ship weren’t warned until March 4, and didn’t begin to quarantine guests until March 5.
Attorneys in that case are asking for it to be heard as a class-action suit, which would allow anyone who was on the trip to join as a plaintiff.
Bell, however, said she has no plans to get involved in the litigation.
“What got me is that before we even got off the ship, some people were already contacting their attorneys to sue Princess,” she said. “They gave us all of our money back, even for the excursions, they comped us everything on the ship, and they gave us another cruise if we take it by next March.”
“I don’t think it’s Princess’ fault that someone came aboard sick” on the previous cruise, Bell added. “I think they did everything they could.”
Sacramento Bee reporter Molly Sullivan contributed to this report.
This story was originally published April 11, 2020 at 10:00 AM with the headline "Coronavirus quarantine turned her 2-week cruise into a monthlong ‘adventure’."
