KEY WEST, Fla. — The vacation the passengers had imagined, a luxurious two-week voyage along the coast of South America to the southernmost tip of the hemisphere, turned into something else entirely. Four passengers on board died, victims of the coronavirus. Many others began showing flulike symptoms, with nine passengers still in the ship hospital. Image Robert Rorison described his experience on the Zaandam via text messages. But with cruise ships widely blamed for spreading an illness the likes of which has not been experienced in a century, Florida officials weighed the potential consequences.

Source: International New York Times April 02, 2020 13:46 UTC