41 COVID-19 infected passengers shifted so far from cruise ship to quarantine facilities: BMC

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Forty one out of 60 COVID-19 infected passengers on board a cruise ship, which returned to Mumbai from Goa, have so far been shifted to institutional quarantine facilities, a civic spokesperson said on Wednesday.

The other 19 passengers who had tested positive for the viral infection were still on the ship, he said, adding that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) conducted RT-PCR tests of 1,827 people on board the cruise on Tuesday night and their reports were expected later in the day.

Except for the COVID-19 infected people, the civic body did not allow any other passenger to disemark from the ship after it arrived here on Tuesday evening. Seven-day home quarantine will be mandatory for the passengers whose RT-PCR test reports come out negative, the official said.

The Cordelia cruise ship, where 66 of the over 2,000 people on board had tested positive for coronavirus, was sent back to Mumbai from Goa with all the passengers on Monday night after some of the infected persons refused to get admitted to a medical facility there, an official from a shipping agency earlier said.

Six crew members out of the total 66 who had tested positive were disembarked in Goa, he said.

The cruise liner anchored at a passenger terminal in Ballard Pier in south Mumbai at around 6.30 pm on Tuesday, and a team of the BMC and police personnel immediately reached the spot to facilitate disembarkment of infected people and coronavirus testing of other passengers.

Out of the 60 coronavirus positive passengers on board the cruise, 41 have been disembarked so far and shifted to institutional quarantine facilities, while the remaining 19 are still on the ship, the BMC official said.

Of the 41 infected passengers who alighted from the ship, one was shifted to a jumbo COVID-19 facility of the civic body at Byculla in central Mumbai, another person was taken to the state-run Saint George Hospital here, while the 39 others were shifted to various hotels, he said.

The civic body conducted RT-PCR tests of 1,827 people on board the ship on Tuesday night. Their samples were sent to medical labs and the reports are expected later in the day, he said.

The BMC has arranged five ambulances, each of them 17-seater, to ferry coronavirus positive patients to quarantine facilities, he said. Adequate police force has been deployed outside the cruise terminal to avoid any law and order issue, he added.