Day 50: And the Ship Sailed On

The worldwide case count has exceeded 309,000 with over 13,000 deaths. In Massachusetts, today's number is 525 cases, up 112 (27%) from yesterday, with 4 travel-related cases and the remainder due to community spread or not yet sourced. The biggest jumps are in the Greater Boston counties, along with noticeable increases in Essex, Bristol, and Plymouth counties. In a considerable number of cases the county is unknown.

Although not included in today's numbers, Channel 25 reports the death of a Middlesex County woman in her 50's with pre-existing conditions.

Some updates from yesterday: the death in Suffolk County was of an 87-year old Winthrop man. More disturbingly, Channel 25 reported that 9 health care workers at Brigham and Womens and 10 health care worker at Tufts Medical Center tested positive, far exceeding their actual case counts (though not the number of patients pending results at both hospitals). It's not clear how many days of testing this total represents. PlagueBlog is duly alarmed.

On the plague ship front, the numbers have changed yet again for Germ Boat #2, the Diamond Princess, with an eighth death today, a Canadian man in his 70's who had been hospitalized (apparently in Japan). Also some time last week, the Japanese suddenly counted fifteen more positives among ill passengers and their contacts who disembarked before the end of quarantine, bringing the total back up over 700 to 712. The New York Post reported Friday on a study determining that foodservice workers were the nexus of this particular germ boat outbreak.

The New York Times reports on yet another ill-omened cruise aboard Germ Boat #14, the Costa Luminosa. PlagueBlog was surprised by the Princess Cruise yesterday, but always suspected that Carnival Cruise Lines would go on operating its other cruise lines after announcing the apparently quite half-hearted closure of Princess. One of those lines is, of course, Costa Cruises.

The Costa Luminosa sailed out of Fort Lauderdale on February 24th for a Caribbean cruise on which its Italian passengers experienced some issues disembarking, though one Italian passenger was allowed to be hospitalized for an apparently unrelated condition. (He later died of coronavirus.) The ship sailed on out of Fort Lauderdale again, for Europe, reportedly only "half full". A second ill Italian was removed to hospital at a stop along the way. She also eventually tested positive. A comedy of errors ensued with no precautions being taken against the spread of the virus for a week, and then the homemade napkin masks appeared on the waiters.

The US would not permit the ship to dock at its original destination in Italy, so the plan was changed to Marseilles. Several other European ports of call turned the ship away. Yesterday, 400 American and Canadian passengers were finally airlifted home from Marseilles under "harrowing" conditions. Today the plague ship docked in Savona, Italy, despite the country being closed. Italian and Swiss passengers began to disembark; more will disembark tomorrow.

There is so much more news: more plague ships, more disturbing clusters across New England, and a run on chloroquine. PlagueBlog struggles to keep up while also working on a better view of the Massachusetts data.