Cruise ship holidays: know about medical insurance, how sickness and injury will be handled, before you buy a ticket
- This year 30 million people will go on a cruise, and some are bound to fall ill or injure themselves while on board
- Before you set sail, find out about the medical facilities on board and check your travel insurance for offshore medical coverage
Royal Caribbean’s gargantuan Oasis of the Seas has four outdoor pools and an 82ft (25-metre) zip line, and made quite a splash shortly after its 2014 refurbishment when it added the first Tiffany boutique at sea.
But in January 2019, the cruise ship, which bills itself as one of the world’s largest, produced less cheerful news: hundreds of passengers came down with a highly contagious norovirus.
The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention reported 561 passengers and 31 crew members were treated for the contagious gastrointestinal illness on a cruise out of Port Canaveral, Florida. That’s more than the total number of passengers who fell ill from the norovirus on every cruise that set sail in 2018, the CDC said.
It could have been worse. As miserable as norovirus is, passengers sometimes face more serious crises at sea. In fact, most cruise ships have morgues on board as well as medical centres. Last year, 189 deaths were reported on cruises, according to CDC data.
