CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) – Carnival Cruise Lines is suspending operations of its Princess Cruises amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The 60-day suspension begins Thursday and will continue through May 10th.
Princess Cruises has been hit particularly hard by the COVID-19 outbreak. Last week, U.S. officials announced 21 confirmed cases of the coronavirus on another Carnival-owned ship, The Grand Princess.
After several days, California officials brought the ship to the Port of Oakland, where passengers are still disembarking and being treated to federal quarantine facilities.
Meanwhile, Carnival Sunshine arrived at the Port of Charleston on Thursday morning from a trip to Nassau in the Bahamas.
News 2 spoke to passengers as they came off the ship, many of which said that Carnival took the precautions needed for them to feel safe.
“We were pretty nervous going with the virus as we were just talking about, there’s been a lot of scary stuff out there about it. But when we contacted Carnival, they told us that they’d be doing a screening going on the boat,” said Morgan Auger, who lives in North Carolina.
Auger said they took everyone’s temperatures before boarding the ship.
“They had us fill out a survey saying if anyone had been to any of the countries that are heavily impacted right now. And then when we got on the boat, there were sanitation stations almost everywhere, leaving restaurants, in and out of the pools,” she said.
The passengers also noted that while at the restaurants on board, the self-serve buffet was handled by Carnival employees who were wearing gloves.
With the current outbreak’s status in the Bahamas unknown, some of the elder patrons decided to stay on board out of precaution.
There was not a second screening that took place as people disembarked at the port.
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