Zaandam cruise ship still has no guaranteed port for its sick passengers as Florida officials balk

On Tuesday, authorities in Broward County, Florida - where the cruise ship with four dead and two in dire need of medical attention hopes to dock this week - said a plan presented by owner Carnival Corp. does not yet address all their concerns.

A representative for the U.S. Coast Guard said the Zaandam and an accompanying ship would not be allowed to enter U.S. waters without submitting "a complete plan for self-support of the medical issues occurring on board the vessels."

At a meeting Tuesday, Coast Guard Capt. Jo-Ann Burdian said a "unified command" - a group of local, state and federal agencies - was looking to get concerns addressed and reach unanimous consent for the ships to dock.

"If not, I think that's a question for a broader audience at the national government level," she said.

But county commissioners said they hoped to see and take action on an updated plan soon - and several said they wanted to allow the ships to offload its passengers at Port Everglades so they could be sent home. In an online update, the port said that if approved, Zaandam is expected to arrive late Wednesday or Thursday.

Some of that ship's passengers who were not experiencing symptoms were transferred to another ship, Rotterdam, to allow more people to have rooms with outside access and to relieve the burden on the crew. As of Tuesday, according to Carnival's chief maritime officer William Burke, there were "a couple" passengers on Rotterdam with flu-like symptoms. Including crew, there are 1,048 people on Zaandam and 1,442 on Rotterdam.

"These people have been turned away from so many countries, one after the other; we are their last hope," said Nan Rich, one of the nine county commissioners. "What are we going to do? Let the ship go back out to sea and let it float around and let people die?"

Four people have died on the Holland America Line vessel; two of those people had confirmed cases of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, Burke said at the meeting. The cruise line had previously only confirmed that two people tested positive, but Burke told county officials that 11 people had been tested and nine were positive.

The company has tried to medically evacuate two passengers whose illness is beyond the ship's capability to handle, but no country has agreed.

"We are coming to a place of last resort," said Burke, a former Navy vice admiral. "I hope the two people we would like to medevac to Mexico will survive the couple-day transit."

Tuesday's meeting comes the day after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, told Fox News he didn't want to see the ships offload their passengers in the state.

"We cannot afford to have people who aren't even Floridians dumped into South Florida using up those valuable resources," DeSantis said, noting that he had been in touch with federal and local officials. "We view this as a big, big problem and we do not want to see people dumped in Southern Florida right now."

So far, the plan calls for arranging charter or charter-like flights out of Fort Lauderdale for passengers who need to be flown out of South Florida to international destinations and the West Coast, as well as transportation to the airport and passage through the airport so passengers don't have contact with other travelers.

Those who have cars at Port Everglades would be allowed to drive home, and the cruise line would drive anyone who lives in South Florida but doesn't have a car at the port back to their residence.

Burke said the company was trying to work out how to get passengers who live elsewhere in the United States and Florida home.

Passengers who are well - those who have not experienced any symptoms - will be asked to fill out a health questionnaire and have a temperature check before they are allowed to leave the ship. They will be told to wear a mask on their trip home and self-isolate for 14 days once they get there. Burke acknowledged that some could have been recently infected and still asymptomatic.

Those who were sick but recovered - meaning seven days had passed since the onset of symptoms and more than three days since symptoms disappeared without the help of medication - could also be released under Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, Burke said.

The cruise line would keep people with symptoms on board until they recovered, unless those passengers needed more help than they could get on the ships. In that case, Burke said, the company would request a medical evacuation. Between them, the two ships have several ventilators, doctors, nurses and a supply of oxygen and personal protective equipment on board.

A CDC representative who participated in the meeting by phone, Cindy Friedman, said anyone who needed to be evacuated was considered a "humanitarian medical concern." And she said federal quarantines on cruise ships are no longer being considered.

"I think the overarching goal here is to get well people to their homes as quickly as possible," she said.

Commissioners expressed frustration at what they called shifting numbers. Burke said only 14 people on the Zaandam were currently sick, half of whom were either in the ship's hospital facility or being treated.

But a blog post by Holland America Line President Orland Ashford posted Monday said that 76 guests and 117 crew had influenza-like symptoms, including eight who were positive for the coronavirus. Burke said the higher numbers were an accumulation of everyone who felt symptoms and recovered; he noted that there had been no new illnesses on Monday.

The ship left Buenos Aires on March 7 and was not allowed to let passengers off in Chile on March 16, three days after Holland America and most other cruise lines around the world suspended operations.

Ashford has continued to plead with authorities to allow the ships to dock, most recently in the blog post and an editorial in a local South Florida newspaper.

“The COVID-19 situation is one of the most urgent tests of our common humanity,” he wrote. “To slam the door in the face of these people betrays our deepest human values.”