About 5,023 passengers and 1,628 crew aboard Costa Cruises’ Costa Smeralda ship were being held in an Italian port after a passenger from Macau, China, came down with flu-like symptoms on Wednesday night amid the ongoing coronavirus outbreak. A Costa Cruises spokesperson confirmed to Fox News on Thursday that sanitary protocol has been activated after a 54-year-old woman fell ill aboard the Smeralda ship, which had sailed from Mallorca, Spain, to Civitavecchia on a weeklong Mediterranean cruise. According to The Telegraph, if the woman indeed has the coronavirus, passengers and crew could be quarantined for two weeks aboard the ship. Vincenzo Leone described the situation aboard the Smeralda as “under control.”“All the planned mechanisms were activated. However, the coronavirus death toll still remains lower than the 348 people in China who were killed by SARS.

Source: Fox News January 30, 2020 15:15 UTC