More than 240 passengers of the luxury Queen Mary 2 cruise ship have gotten sick with the highly contagious norovirus stomach bug. The US Centers for Disease Control and Protection reported that the outbreak occurred at the end of the ship’s four-week trip from the UK to the Caribbean.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) reported that over 240 passengers aboard the luxury Queen Mary 2 cruise ship fell sick with the norovirus stomach bug at the end of a four-week long trip from the United Kingdom to the Caribbean.
The Queen Mary 2 set sail on March 8th from Southampton and is set to return to England on April 6th. According to data from the CDC, 224 out of the 2,538 passengers have gotten sick from the gastrointestinal virus with 17 out of the 1,232 crew members also getting sick.
Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert and professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told CNN recently that the norovirus is “known obviously as the cruise ship virus.”
Norovirus is known to be very contagious, so individuals in close quarters are likely to spread it. Like cruise ships, places such as camps, dormitories, and hotels are known to spread the virus.
“This is a virus that can infect you with very few viral particles. In other words, the infectious dose is very small,” said Schaffner.
“[Norovirus] can persist for days or even a week on environmental surfaces, which means that if you put your fingers on a contaminated surface, you can pick up a few viral particles, touch your mouth and then initiate an infection.”
The Queen Mary 2 is under the Cunard Line which is owned by the Carnival Corporation. The CDC reported that Cunard Line has increased their cleaning and disinfection practices on board following this recent outbreak. Infected passengers have also been quarantined from others and are getting tested.
The CDC also has a Vessel Sanitation Program that is responsible for tracking outbreaks at sea, and they confirmed to CNN that “remotely monitoring the situation, including review of the ship’s outbreak response and sanitation procedures.”
The Vessel Sanitation Program also stated that Cunard Line has been working with them in order to practice the best cleaning practices on the Queen Mary 2 while keeping them posted on how the illness is spreading on board.
The cruise line stated they have implemented a detailed deep cleaning system for the ship which has already been effective. “We are already seeing a reduction in reported cases,” a spokesperson stated. The CDC stated that 2024 was the worst year of gastrointestinal outbreaks on cruise ships in over a decade. A majority of the outbreaks were connected to the norovirus. Throughout 2024 there were 16 gastrointestinal cruise outbreaks, with 14 occurring in 2023, a CDC spokesperson said.
“While 2023 and 2024 both had higher numbers of cruise ship outbreaks than in years prior to the pandemic, we do not yet know if this represents a new trend.”
Between 2020 and 2022, the cruise industry shut down and slowly restarted due to the Covid-19 pandemic. “Cruise ship travel during the Covid-19 pandemic was limited, and prior to that, we saw that the rates of gastrointestinal illness on cruise ships decreased (during 2006-2019),” said the CDC spokesperson.
In a statement the industry organization Cruise Lines International Association said:
“Incidents of illness onboard cruise ships are extremely rare. Outbreaks are found and reported more quickly on a cruise ship than on land,”
The agency said about 19-21 million cases of norovirus occur in the US every year. Including the Queen Mary 2, the CDC reported 11 outbreaks of gastrointestinal illness on board cruise ships for 2025 so far.
For those who are planning on going on a cruise this year, if they present stomach illness symptoms, the CDC said that they should “promptly report their illness if they are sick and follow medical staff recommendations. Passengers should wash their hands often, especially after using the toilet and before eating or drinking.”
Dr. Schaffner said that future cruise passengers should stay home and rebook their cruise if they feel sick at all before their trip.
“[Prospective cruise passengers should] pay meticulous attention to all the hygienic instructions that you are given on the cruise ship, and pay particular attention to hand hygiene. And in this circumstance, soap and water is actually better than using the sanitary hand wipes or lotions that we use, because norovirus is not very affected by the alcohol that’s in the hand wipes and the lotions.”
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
