The Carnival Cruise Ship That Spread Coronavirus Around the World

New Zealand. Despite the accelerating COVID nineteen pandemic, Australian officials cleared the Ruby to disembark, a decision that would have profound consequences once the two thousand, six hundred plus passengers had left the ship and Carol. Unlike the other cruise ship outbreaks, the Ruby was a devastating incubator, discovered only after passengers were off the ship. Many immediately began traveling home,

catching flights before international borders were closed. By the evening of Friday, March twenty, contact tracers had managed to reach only forty four of the five hundred and seventy international guests, and then Jason and the months that have followed, the New South Wales government convened a high profile public inquiry. The New South Wales Police Force still engage in a lengthy investigation, and lawsuits in Australian California are only now

in their early stages. It all began with a super spreader of a cruise ship in a time of transformation. UL knows that trust is necessary for innovation and business success. We use science and data driven insights to help you build the trust. Stakeholders demand. The future relies on trust, and UEL empowers it. Learn more and access free research

at UL dot com slash Trust Cruise Ship zero. How were hundreds of people with COVID nineteen allowed to step off a Carnival liner in Sydney and return to their homes around the world By Matthew Campbell. At about six am on March nine, William Wright, a retired Australian mortgage broker, woke up feeling a little off. He had a cough and his nose was running, though it didn't seem too bad in any case, there was no time to linger

in bed. Right and his wife Flucia, had just docked in Sydney after a ten day journey around New Zealand on the Ruby Princess, a nine and fifty ft hundred and forty two cabin vessel operated by Carnivals Princess Cruizes subsidiary. The couple's disembarkation time was eight oh five am, so they quickly packed up and had breakfast. They arrived on schedule in the Explorers Lounge, the nightclub, where they'd been told to assemble with other passengers leaving at the same time.

Unloading a cruise ship is a complex process and delays aren't unusual, but the Rights waited only a short while before being told they could go. They made their way through the corridors, past crew members, waving goodbye and offering high fives. Getting through Sydney's Overseas Passenger Terminal took only a few minutes. Despite the accelerating COVID nineteen pandemic, Australian

officials had cleared the Ruby to disembark without restrictions. Passengers didn't even need to show their passport, let alone get their temperature checked. The only paperwork was an Gracian form that border guards glanced at before waving people through. By eight thirty the Rights were on the street, where plus passengers had begun filtering into taxis, commuter trains, and densely packed airport buses. I am a regular traveler overseas by

flights and cruises. Right later, said in a statement to investigators, I have never experienced something so fast. The decision to allow the Ruby to dock would have profound consequences. The ship turned out to be the single most important vector for the coronavirus in Australia, accounting at one point for more than ten percent of the country's cases. In Tasmania, two cruisers were the probable source of an outbreak so

severe it forced a major hospital to shut down. Other infected passengers flew to the US, where some ultimately died. The crew meanwhile became virtual prisoners on their own vessel,

some unable to return home for months. Although multiple cruise ships recorded large numbers of COVID nineteen cases in the early stages of the pandemic, the Ruby was unique, and not simply because twenty eight people died of the illness, the most of any voyage to other notorious carnival ships, the Diamond Princess, which was sealed off for weeks on a Japanese Pier and the Zan Dam, which sailed up the entire west coast of South America looking for a

country that would allow it to dock, were vessels that guests couldn't leave. The Ruby was the opposite, the incubator of a devastating outbreak, discovered only after passengers were on dry land. In an emailed statement, Princess said that our highest responsibility and our top priority is always the safety, health and well being of our guests, crew members, and the people in the communities we visit, and that it fully complied with public health guidance throughout the Ruby's travels.

As new information became available from global health authorities, we continually adapted our policies and protocols to reflect the latest updated thinking with respect to COVID eighteen. When the Ruby set sail, the company said there was no reported community spread of COVID nineteen in Australia that changed emphatically after the ship docked. Until then, the country, with its isolated geography and excellent health care system, had seemed poised to

escape the worst of the pandemic. The ensuing fiasco has prompted a series of efforts to figure out what went wrong and whom to blame. The ensuing fiasco has prompted a series of efforts to figure out what went wrong and whom to blame. The new South Wales government convened a high profile public inquiry, and police are in the midst of an investigation led by homicide detectives. Lawsuits by

passengers are also under way. Everyone is trying to answer a central question, how at a moment when governments around the world were on high alert, where hundreds of infected people allowed to stroll off a cruise ship and into the heart of Sydney. Circular Quay might be the most spectacular place in the world to begin as the voyage. Lying at the foot of Sydney's financial district, It's bound on one side by the Rocks, one of the continent's

earliest European settlements. Beyond that is the soaring arch of the Harbor Bridge, and just opposite the white concrete sales of the city's famed opera house. None of the thousands of passengers who crowded the Quays cruise port to board the Ruby on March eighth appeared deterred by the growing alarm over the novel coronavirus. Although Australians were getting nervous, shops in Sydney had begun to run out of hand sanitizer and canned food, and arrivals from China, Iran and

South Korea had been banned. The country had only a handful of cases. In New Zealand, where the thirteen day Cruise was heading, there were even fewer. Stephen and Rosie Keel, retirees from Tasmania, arrived around twelve thirty PM to start a voyage celebrating Rosie's seventieth birthday. Shortly after they reached the terminal, Princess made an announcement boarding would be delayed until at least the late afternoon. We went up to

Circular Quay and found a nice little pub. Stephen recalls the whole discussion, as you can imagine, was about the virus, and we unfortunately took the attitude, oh, this won't happen to us. The rates are very low. Rosie posed for photos with the Ruby's bow overhead. Stephen wanted to edit

them so the whole would read Princess Rosie. What they didn't know was that at dawn that morning, just after the ship pulled in from its previous cruise, a government epidemiologist named Kelly and Wrestler had boarded with seven other staff. They carried suitcases full of masks, gloves, and testing swabs.

The new South Wales Health Agency wanted to screen arriving passengers who appeared to be at risk of having COVID nineteen, whether because they had reported respiratory symptoms or had recently been in an affected country. Wrestler was shocked by the number she found gathered in a dining room, more than three hundred in all. She and her team handed out masks, took temperatures, and asked about travel histories. They decided to test nine people for the virus and allow the others

to disembark until the results came in. A doctor told the crew new passengers shouldn't be allowed on board. At five thirty p m. The tests came back all negative, the Ruby was cleared to depart on its next cruise. Boarding proceeded, and the ship left its berth late in the evening, easing past the Opera House and out of

the harbor. Some guests watched from their balconies the lights of the city fading as they reached the open Pacific Diane Fish, a travel agent from Delray Beach, Florida, would have been content to spend the two day passage to

New Zealand sleeping. She'd been on the road since late February, leading a group of clients through a packed itinerary around Australia, but the cruise was part of the trip, so she settled into her usual roles as tour director and social convener, checking out the on board entertainment and making sure everyone was having a good time. The bad news from overseas was mounting. Italy had imposed a nationwide locked down on March nine, and President Trump soon imposed an unprecedented ban

on European arrivals to the United States. Fish wasn't too anxious, given that she was thousands of miles away from any known outbreak. It just did not occur to me that we weren't safe where we were, she says. But she did ask a colleague to be prepared to help rearrange her group's travel if the cruise was halted in New Zealand. There was plenty to occupy passengers on the way across the Tasman Sea. Launched in two thousand and eight, the Ruby was far from Princess's newest or biggest chip, but

it was still impressive. It had nineteen decks, four swimming pools, and dozens of restaurants and attractions, many of them arrayed around a central atrium called the Piazza, inspired, as Princess's marketing copy optimistically put it, by the vibrant squares of Europe. The Rubies Italian captain Giorgio Pomata, was the commodore of

the entire Princess fleet. After arriving in New Zealand, the ship passed first through fior Land, a region of spectacular mountain bays in the far southwest, before stopping in Dunedin. The Ruby then began port hopping northward, with the final stop in the Bay of Islands planned for March eighteenth. After arriving in New Zealand, the ship passed first through fiord Land, a region of spectacular mountain bays in the

far southwest, before stopping in Dunedin. The Ruby then began port hopping northward, with the final stop in the Bay of Islands planned for March eighteenth. On March fifteenth, the Ruby stopped in Napier, on the edge of North Island Wine Country, and throngs of passengers spilled into town, hitting souvenir shops and piling onto tour buses. The same day, Australia's Prime Minister, Scott Morrison announced that his country was significantly stepping up its efforts to keep out the coronavirus.

Everyone arriving from overseas would have to spend fourteen days in isolation, no matter where they were traveling from. Cruise ship arrivals from foreign ports would be banned. As of midnight, no one at Carnival's regional office was sure what the announcement meant for vessels such as the Ruby, which was carrying a large number of Australian passengers, but that evening an announcement went out over the ship's public address system

the crews would head straight back to Sydney. Stephen Keel, an accomplished sailor, had been tracking the Ruby's progress online, and he soon noticed the bridge crew was flooring it, traveling at twenty four or twenty five knots instead of the eighteen or so on the way to New Zealand. In the aftermath of the Diamond Princess, Carnival managers were well aware of what could happen to the ship if it was delayed. We don't want to get yourselves stranded anywhere or have a protest at a port due to

cruise ships in the region. A Sydney based executive route to Commodore Pomata. The passenger experience, meanwhile, remained largely unchanged, with social distancing still a novel concept outside of China. Restaurants, bars and other attractions stayed open. Crowded St. Patrick's Day celebrations went ahead. Back in sid Me, officials were assessing

whether and how to let the Ruby dock. The state government's criteria for determining whether a cruise ship could be carrying the virus were based on where passengers had traveled previously, where they'd been on their current trip, and crucially, what share of them had reported influenza like illness or i l I, generally understood to refer to a fever and

respiratory symptoms. If the number exceeded one percent of the guests and crew, and if onboard tests for influenza showed that not to be the culprit, a vessel might be deemed high risk and everyone kept on the ship until coronavirus swabs could be tested by an onshore lab. A medium risk landing, such as the Ruby's March eighth the Rival flagged in part because some passengers had been in Singapore, involved a more flexible menu of responses, whereas in a

low risk scenario passengers could disembark normally. On the morning of March eighteenth, the day before the Ruby was due to arrive, Wrestler, the government epidemiologist, was copied on an email from the ship's senior doctor, Ilse von Watsdorff. It answered a list of questions about passenger travel histories and conditions, Noting that medical staff had collected swabs for a few

cases of febrile influenza test negative individuals. Von Wattsdorff had attached the required spreadsheet listing the names, conditions, and temperatures of passengers with flu like symptoms. The decision on how to treat the Ruby lay not with Wrestler, but with a separate panel of public health experts. They didn't find

the numbers alarming. Many patients had come to the medical clinic during the journey back, but that might have been explained by announcements instructing passengers with coughs or other respiratory issues to get checked, rather than because the virus was spreading. No one had recently been to the highest risk countries, and the I ll I ratio was a bit below one percent, with a considerable number of people testing positive

for the flu. The panel determined that the ruby was low risk, but advised that swabs from some of the symptomatic passengers be tested for corona iris just in case. On board, things were getting weird. As the boat neared Port Percy, Anderson, a seventy five year old from Queensland, entered an elevator to find a heavy set, younger man in a hoodie zipped all the way up to cover his mouth and nose. The woman with him was wearing a surgical mask and both appeared to be having trouble breathing.

Anderson and his wife Esther, exchanged a glance but didn't say anything. He later told investigators. Another passenger, Paul Reid, recalled going to the clinic with a cough and a sore throat. He said a doctor swabbed his nose and soon told him you don't have corona. Reid assumed that meant he was negative for COVID nineteen, but the medical team had no ability to perform such a test. Fish was still hoping to relax. She booked a treatment at

the SPA in anticipation of the long journey back to Florida. Afterwards, she felt strange, stiff, and so tired that I didn't want to get up the next day. She figured it was the fatigue of the trip catching up to her. Late on March eighteenth, a call came into Vessel Traffic Services VTS, the office responsible for managing movements in Sydney Harbor. Someone from the State Ambulance Service was on the line requesting an update on the Ruby apport. Manager Cameron butchert

found the call unusual. Ambulances were frequently dispatched to cruise arrivals given the medical problems that could befall elderly passengers, but the office rarely got a heads up. Butcher called back to find out more. We've got two bookings here for Carnival Australia for a cruise ship that's coming in at two thirty with two suspected corona pations on board. An ambulance coordinator told him, we just wanted to know if the ship was actually coming into port and if

they're allowed to disembark. The ambulance officials said they'd reached out to their contact at Carnival but got only voicemail. Alarmed, Butcher hung up and started calling people at Carnival. No one answered. He emailed a colleague and asked him to stop the Ruby from docking. Advised the ship that their booking is denied. He wrote there to have their agent contact Sydney VTS urgently. Port officials ultimately reached Carnival staff.

According to investigative documents, they said they'd requested the ambulances for a passenger with severe leg pain and another with cardiac trouble, not because of suspected coronavirus infections. Given that and the Health Agency's designation, the port authority agreed that the Ruby was clear to land. At two thirty am, it moored at Circular Quay. Disembarkation would begin first thing in the morning. By nine a m. The sidewalk outside

the terminal was dense with passengers. Anderson and his wife had a flight later that day to Brisbane, so they took a packed bus to Sydney Airport. They were in the check in queue when they noticed a commotion behind them. A woman had collapsed, Anderson immediately recognized her and the man kneeling at her side as the pair he'd seen laboring to breathe in the Ruby Princess Elevator. Paramedics soon arrived with a stretcher. Phi had also boarded a bus

to the airport with other passengers. I sat down, leaving some space, she says, and I hear the lady in front of me cough. Two seconds after that, the guy behind me coughs, then the guy to my right, and I said to my husband, everyone on this bus is sick. Meanwhile, Wrestler was waiting for the results of the swab tests from the Ruby, most of them for passengers who had already scattered. That afternoon, she logged on to an online lab portal to check if they were done. They weren't.

They hadn't even been registered in the system. She phoned the lab and was told they'd be tested soon. Early the next morning, she logged in again. Three of the swabs she saw were positive. One was from a crew member still on board, another was from a Tasmanian guest. The third was from a woman named Leslie Bacon, who had been one of the patients taken off in an ambulance suffering from leg pain. Von Wattsdorff had told health

authorities that both passengers also had respiratory symptoms. The ruby Stler was learning too late, had been anything but low risk. The state government rushed to deploy contact tracers, and officials convened conference calls to figure out what had gone wrong. Time was growing short to contain the spread. Towards the

end of the day, Wrestler noticed something odd. Some of the people who'd been tested for coronavirus weren't on the list of symptomatic passengers and crew sent on March eighteenth. By this point, there were at least four positive results, including one for the other patients who'd left in an ambulance. Wrestler sent to WhatsApp message to von Watsdorff. Do you have an updated a r I log, she asked, referring to acute respiratory illness. Some of the later people swabbed

aren't on the one I have. Did you add any more patients after you sent it to me? Von Wattsdorff responded six minutes later, I'll send it now. Sorry, I forgot that. The last one was from the morning. It was so crazy. The updated numbers weren't drastically higher, but they did differ in one crucial respect. The I ll I ratio was almost one point three percent, well above the one percent threshold that indicated a higher level of risk.

The Ruby had also been updating a separate government platform with information on reported passenger illnesses until early evening on March eighteenth, but Wrestler later testified that she wasn't aware of that data. I keep on asking myself what I could have done better to protect people, Von Watsdorff wrote to Wrestler that night. Wrestler replied almost immediately, Yeah, there will be more cases, probably a lot. The Rubies passengers were all over Australia and beyond, having in some cases

caught the final flights before international boarders closed. Carnival had provided officials with a list of emails and phone numbers so everyone could be reached, but the details weren't all correct, and some passengers didn't pick up their phones or had turned them off. By the evening of Friday, March twentie, contact tracers had managed to reach only forty four of the five seven the international guests they'd tried over the weekend.

Quantas Airways reported to officials that one seventy close contacts from the Ruby Princess had flown to the US on March twenty feet. It was only the following night that the Australian Border Force put Ruby passengers on a list that would prompt a do not board alert at check in desks. Fish had been unaware of the positive cases when she boarded her flight back to the US on March nineteenth. She found out only when she landed in San Francisco for her connection to Florida, and some of

her group got contact tracing calls. As it happened, she'd begun feeling sick, herself really sick. The airport was almost deserted, and she found an isolated bench, laid down her head and went to sleep. I knew I had a fever. I just sat away from everyone else, and I wanted to get tested as soon as possible, she says. After getting home, Fish slept for almost twelve hours straight. When she woke up, she found an urgent care center that

could test her. The results confirmed her suspicions. She was positive. Her husband turned out to be as well. I was in bed for ten days, she says, it knocks you out. All you wanna do is sleep and sweat. Positive tests from the Ruby were popping up all over Australia too, right the former mortgage broker thought he had a cold when he reached his home south of Sydney, so he

took some flue pills and an antihistamine. Two days later, a friend who had also been on the cruise called her husband had been taken to the hospital in an ambulance suffering from complications of COVID nineteen. The rights got tested. Both were positive. They recovered without complications. Another two Ruby passengers, Graham Lake, a seventy two year old Vietnam veteran, and his wife Carla, were self isolating at home near Brisbane. They'd heard on March twentieth that a friend who'd been

on board had tested positive for the coronavirus. Carla had a dry cough herself, but that wasn't unusual. It was a sight of act of medication she took for her arthritis. Still, the couple went to a makeshift clinic outside a local hospital. The staff wouldn't give Graham a test because he didn't have symptoms, but Carla got one. She also had a fever, and the hospital kept her to wait for the results. The next morning, Carla called to telegram she'd tested positive.

He soon noticed he was also getting sick, lousy, like a cold, heavy in the chest. He later told police it seemed to be getting worse, and the next week an ambulance brought him back to the hospital. He had the virus too. The next day he was moved into the same room as Carla, who was coughing terribly. He said it was shocking. Soon she was in the intensive care unit where she could be given more oxygen. Soon she was in the intensive care unit where she could

get more oxygen. Graham moved with her, taking a bed a few feet away. In the early hours of March twenty nine, he stopped hearing the sound of her breathing. He got up and took her hand to feel for a pulse. I could tell you then that she had passed away, he said. He stayed with her for a while, then went back to his own bed, unsure what to do next. I had just watched my wife die and

there was nothing I could do. In Hobart Keel, the Tasmanian retiree, had also tested positive at home one day, he says, I got up, had breakfast and couldn't lift my head off the table. An ambulance brought him to the hospital, where doctor sent him to the I c U and put him on a ventilator. He has only vague memories of what followed, a period of heavy sedation and lurid dreams. At one point he woke up with daughters and nurses gathered around his bed. I remember the

fear around me, just the sheer panic, Keel says. I was almost crying, asking am I going to be all right? And I could tell from the answers that I wasn't. Keel's wife, Rosie, and their daughter came to see him for what they feared would be the last time, donning gowns, masks, goals, and gloves to enter the room. Their son was reluctant

to come. He didn't want his final memory of his father, an athletic man who had competed nine times in the notoriously difficult Sydney to Hobart's Sailing race, to be of him hooked up to a ventilator, sensors and I V drips. Keel spent eleven days that way before finally recovering months later, he still isn't feeling like himself. He's often short of breath, has trouble sleeping, and struggles with severe pain in his hands.

I reckon. Out of the six that we went with on the cruise, Keiel says, I was the fittest and yet look at how I came out. Only one group aboard the Ruby was treated almost from the start as potential carriers of the virus. It's one thousand plus crew members, many from countries like Indonesia and the Philippines, weren't allowed

to disembark in Sydney. There are thousands of people potentially in cruise ships off our coasts that aren't members of our state, and if we take them in then that could well flood our system, said Fuller, the new South Wales Police Force Commissioner. It's time to go to your

port of origin. But that directive was all but meaningless for a company like Carnival, a tangle of financial engineering that's incorporated in Panama in the UK, operates out of Miami and flags its ships in tax havens such as Bermuda, the Ruby's nominal home port. For the moment, those on board would remain while the company figured out where it could sail With the passengers gone, the crew became in

effect their own guests. On March nineteenth, a sail away party took place around one of the pools, with the Sydney Skyline towering above. There was a dance performance and an m C promised a great cruise ahead. It has been a challenging time, but you have done an amazing job, he said. It seemed to some, at least as if it were the beginning of a well deserved break. We thought it was a holiday from then on, says Byron Sodani, an Italian fitness trainer who had been working on the

ship since January. A cruise without passengers, it was really exciting, but it was also a cruise without a destination. The Ruby soon left the harbor to wait off shore, where its medical staff attended to an increasing number of personnel

with respiratory symptoms. A Filipino crewmen who asked not to be identified because he feared consequences for speaking to the media, recalls that more and more of his colleagues were being transferred from their cramped shared accommodations to passenger cabins where they could more easily isolate. There were several dozen on the first day of moving, then hundreds more over the next couple of days. It was very scary because you

don't know what's going on. The crewmen says only the sickest staff were permitted to return to Sydney for treatment. With opposition politicians and trade unions raising the alarm about conditions on the Ruby, Australian officials in early April allowed it to dock not at Circular Quay, where it would be in full view of much of Sydney, but at Port Kembla and out of the way industrial harbor. There the ship became aim, as Paul Holmes, a British pianist on board, put it in a Facebook video, a five

star floating prison. Almost everyone was confined to quarters, permitted to open the door only to accept food or attend to medical needs. Police officers and soldiers guarded the pier. One night, detectives came aboard in head to toe hasmat gear to seize the vessels black box style data recorder and other evidence. The state government was desperate to resolve

the situation. I've drawn a line in the sand and i want this ship gone fuller told the Australian, but sending it back to sea full of COVID nineteen patients would have been unconscionable. By mid April, more than ten percent of the crew had tested positive. It took until

late in the month to arrive at a solution. Everyone on board was tested, with a substantial number of those who samples came back negative permitted to depart by air, so Donni disembarked within hours of being cleared for departure. He was taken to the Sheraton in central Sydney, where he remained until flying to Doha and then on to Rome.

Staff from poor countries had a more difficult time, Despite protests by sympathetic groups who argued that Australia should help them get home, About five hundred crew, largely from developing nations with limited ability to organize repatriation efforts, stayed on the Ruby to sail to Manila, the capital of one of the few countries admitting cruise ships to their waters. The Filipino crewmen was relatively fortunate, permitted to disembark on April twenty three so he could take a charter flight

from Sydney. Other staff endured a two week boat trip to the Philippines, then waited weeks for permission to come ashore. Even so, the crewmen had to spend more than three weeks quarantined in a Manila hotel before he was allowed to begin the eighteen hour ferry journey to his home province. He was quarantined for a further two weeks there. He was finally free on June fourth, seventy seven days after the cruise's guests disembarked. The Ruby Princess is now anchored

off the coast of Malaysia. It's not yet clear whether anyone will be held to account for what happened on board. In all, at least six hundred and sixty three guests and crew are known to have been infected with coronavirus. The twenty eight people who died twenty in Australia and eight in the US, represent a toll twice as large as that from the Diamond Princess, the vessel that recorded

the next highest number of fatalities. Barring stupendous negligence on some future voyage, the Ruby is likely when the history of the pandemic is written, to retain the distinction of having incubated its deadliest marine outbreak. The New South Wales Police Force is still engaged in a lengthy investigation, while lawsuits in Australia and California are in their early stages.

The public inquiry, led by a prominent Sydney lawyer, published its report on August fourteenth, finding that Carnival and the Ruby's medical staff had generally complied with public health requirements. It did say that von Wattsdorf would have made sure public health officials were aware of how many sick passengers had arrived after she sent her initial disease log, an

oversight that, if avoided, might have changed outcomes. Whether the company should have been operating ships at all given what was already known about the virus and cruises wasn't part of the inquiry's brief. The report's sharpest criticism was reserved for the process the government used to clear the Ruby to doc which it said was marked by serious efforts. It called the decision to deem the vessel low risk

as inexplicable as it is unjustifiable. Wrestler, the State epidemiologist, had broken down in tears while testifying, we did what we could. She said, her voice unsteady if we could do it again, it would be very different. After the report's release, Princess issued a statement expressing profound sorrow about the deaths. New South Wales Premier Gladys Berrajiclion said she

wished to apologize unreservedly for mistakes by health personnel. Nowhere were the tragic consequences more apparent than in Northwest Tasmania, an economically struggling, largely rural corner of Australia's smallest state. The first sick passenger from the Ruby Princess arrived at the Northwest Regional Hospital in w r H in the town of Burney shortly after the vessel got back to Sydney.

Another was admitted about a week later. By early April, an investigation by the state Health Authority found one or both of them had likely become the original source of a chain of COVID nineteen cases among nurses and other care personnel. Some continued to work while experiencing symptoms, and the virus spread rapidly among departments, infecting staff and patients alike.

Unable to contain the outbreak any other way, on April twelfth, the Tasmanian government announced it would shut down the hospital, ordering employees and their families into an immediate fourteen day quarantine. Military doctors had to fly in to handle emergencies. In all, one hundred and thirty eight people in the region were infected, ten of whom died. The outbreak was random in its cruelty.

One couple, Bill and adrian Christ had lived in the northwestern part of the island for more than forty years. They'd met in Sydney when Adrianne was still a rebellious teenager hanging out in a red light district pub, and Bill was in the navy. The bar was the first watering hole he'd spotted after his ship docked one day. They were soon married and later moved to Olverstone, a mid sized town about a half hour's drive from Bernie. They raised three daughters in a house with a view

out to sea. Bill worked on a tugboat and at the end of the day Adrianne could tell when he'd be home by how far out he was. He had emphyzyma and needed an oxygen tank to breathe comfortably. Other than that he was in pretty good nick. He was still enjoying life. Adrianne says, we were enjoying our old age. In early April, Bill told Adrianne he wasn't feeling well and not to go get checked out. She drove, and as they left home, she asked Bill whether he wanted to go left to Bernie and the n w R

H or right to a hospital in another town. He preferred the Bernie Road, a scenic route that traces the edge of the Bass straight, so that's the way we went, Adrianne says. The hospital admitted Bill right away. At first, there were no obvious virus precautions, she recalls, but when he took a turn for the worse a few days later, she was told she'd have to go. I said no, I stay, and then they put me in one of those yellow gowns, gloves, shoe covers, big goggles over my spectacles.

At one point, she says, I bent down to kiss him, and a nurse came over and just about put her hand in front of my face. Still, Adrianne refused to leave. We'd made wedding vows and we believed in what we said, so when they wanted to shuffle me out, I said, no, I can't go. If he's dying, I have to stay. Bill died on April tenth, the day after the couple's

fifty seventh wedding anniversary. Adrianne was told only near the end that he'd been diagnosed with COVID nineteen, almost certainly acquired while he was in the hospital, second hand or third hand from the Ruby Princess, as she now knows. At first, she found it hard to understand how the virus could have made it all the way to her isolated corner of the world. I thought that comes from cruise ships, and we haven't even been near a cruise

ship with Jason Scott. And that's Matt Campbell's feature story in Bloomberg Business Week this week about Carnival's Ruby Princess, the ship docking, and then the spread of COVID that happened after it. Be sure to check out that story and so much more, including our cover story, and that is about Facebook and its relationship with President Trump. I'm

Carol Masser and I'm Jason Kelly. Check us out every day on the radio Bloomberg Business Week starting at two pm Wall Street Time, and of course, subscribe to our podcast feed This is Bloomberg. Join us for the Bloomberg Equality Summit on September. Speakers include Alicia Garza, LLL cool J, doctor Anthony Fauci, Alissa Milano, David Rubinstein, Sonny Houstin, and Minnie More. This event is proudly sponsored by P and G, TPG, Bank of America, and Google Cloud. To register, go to

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