British grandmother, 77, trapped on coronavirus cruise ship in US complains of going ‘stir crazy’

By | March 10, 2020

British grandmother, 77, trapped on coronavirus-stricken cruise ship off US coast complains of going ‘stir crazy’ after being confined to her cabin for five days

  • Margaret Bartlett, 77, one 142 UK holidaymakers left in limbo on Grand Princess 
  • Grandmother, from Burnley, says passengers are forced to fight over rotten food
  • She has been confined to her cabin, which has no balcony, for six days in a row 
  • Cruise docked in San Francisco yesterday and let Americans and Canadians off
  • But UK nationals being kept on board until evacuation planes come to get them 

Margaret Bartlett, 77, is one of 142 UK holidaymakers left in limbo on the Grand Princess off the Californian coast, where 21 passengers have tested positive for the virus

Margaret Bartlett, 77, is one of 142 UK holidaymakers left in limbo on the Grand Princess off the Californian coast, where 21 passengers have tested positive for the virus

Britain is the only country that won’t force passengers evacuated from a coronavirus-stricken US cruise ship into quarantine when they return home, it emerged today.

More than 142 UK holidaymakers are currently stranded on the Grand Princess in San Francisco after 21 people tested positive for the killer virus on board.

The British passengers will be flown home on a repatriation flight tonight after being left in limbo and stranded in their cabins for six days. 

But the evacuated UK nationals will be free to make their own way home and will not be forcibly quarantined when they land in the UK, MailOnline understands. 

Instead, they will be asked to self-isolate at home and told to only get in touch with the NHS if they fall ill – despite the fact infect patients are highly contagious a week before showing symptoms.   

It has sparked fears the returning passengers may spread the virus at home and add to the UK crisis which has seen 373 infections in the UK and six people die.

Canadian passengers disembark and line up behind tents denoted with the country's flag on Monday after the 21 infected passengers were removed. Canadian citizens will be repatriated back home

Canadian passengers disembark and line up behind tents denoted with the country’s flag on Monday after the 21 infected passengers were removed. Canadian citizens will be repatriated back home 

Americans and Canadians were allowed to disembark from the vessel yesterday after it docked in San Francisco

Americans and Canadians were allowed to disembark from the vessel yesterday after it docked in San Francisco 

Hundreds of Americans have been taken off the Grand Princess cruise ship and driven to military bases around America to start two weeks of quarantine after a coronavirus outbreak on board. Pictured, a bus arrives at Travis Air Force Base

Hundreds of Americans have been taken off the Grand Princess cruise ship and driven to military bases around America to start two weeks of quarantine after a coronavirus outbreak on board. Pictured, a bus arrives at Travis Air Force Base

Some 1,500 people were evacuated from the ship on Monday, including two dozen people requiring urgent medical care. Pictured, a bus full of American passengers arrives at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California

Some 1,500 people were evacuated from the ship on Monday, including two dozen people requiring urgent medical care. Pictured, a bus full of American passengers arrives at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California

Cruises are perfect breeding grounds for the highly contagious virus which spreads via a simple cough or sneeze and can live on handrails and doorknobs for days

Cruises are perfect breeding grounds for the highly contagious virus which spreads via a simple cough or sneeze and can live on handrails and doorknobs for days 

Hundreds of Americans that were on the Grand Princess have already disembarked and are being whisked off to quarantine in military bases scattered around the States. 

Canadians were also allowed off the ship yesterday and flown back home where quarantine measures are in place ready for them.

Cruises are perfect breeding grounds for the highly contagious virus which spreads via a simple cough or sneeze and can live on handrails and doorknobs for days.

There were more than 700 infections and six deaths on the Diamond Princess cruise ship which was quarantined off Japan in February. 

Health officials in the US were keen not to have a repeat of the outbreak last month and ruled out quarantining the American ship.

Instead they drew up plans to evacuate everyone on board and fly them to their respective countries to be isolated and treated there.

The 142 Brits were among 3,500 passengers and crew from 50 different countries on the ship, which had been cruising around the Californian coast.  

It arrived in San Francisco yesterday, where hundreds of American and Canadian passengers were allowed to disembark.  

US passengers are being flown or bused from the port to military bases in California, Texas and Georgia for testing and a 14-day quarantine.  

California residents will be sent to the Travis Air Force base in Fairfield or Marine Corps Air Station Miramar near San Diego. 

Non-Californians will be flown to Joint Base San Antonio Lackland in Texas or Dobbins Air Force Base in Georgia.

US authorities opted to evacuate the Grand Princess after efforts to quarantine passengers on board the Diamond Princess ship failed and led to 700 getting sick, along with six deaths

US authorities opted to evacuate the Grand Princess after efforts to quarantine passengers on board the Diamond Princess ship failed and led to 700 getting sick, along with six deaths

Around 2,000 passengers were left on board the ship overnight after Americans and Canadians were let off

Around 2,000 passengers were left on board the ship overnight after Americans and Canadians were let off

WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF CORONAVIRUS?

Like other coronaviruses, including those that cause the common cold and that triggered SARS, COVID-19 is a respiratory illness.

 The most common symptoms are:

  • Fever
  • Dry cough
  • Shortness of breath
  • Difficulty breathing
  • Fatigue 

Although having a runny nose doesn’t rule out coronavirus, it doesn’t thus far appear to be a primary symptom.

Most people only become mildly ill, but the infection can turn serious and even deadly, especially for those who are older or have underlying health conditions.

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In these cases, patients develop pneumonia, which can cause: 

  • Potentially with yellow, green or bloody mucus Fever, sweating and shaking chills
  • Shortness of breath Rapid or shallow breathing 
  • Pain when breathing, especially when breathing deeply or coughing 
  • Low appetite, energy and fatigue 
  • Nausea and vomiting (more common in children) Confusion (more common in elderly people) 
  • Some patients have also reported diarrhea and kidney failure has occasionally been a complication. 

Avoid people with these symptoms. If you develop them, call your health care provider before going to the hospital or doctor, so they and you can prepare to minimize possible exposure if they suspect you have coronavirus.

 

Some 240 Canadians were loaded on specially-chartered evacuation flights home to start a quarantine of their own. 

Around 2,000 people – including 142 Britons – were left on the ship overnight, anxiously waiting for disembarkation to restart on Tuesday morning for their chance to leave.   

But UK nationals will have to wait until Tuesday evening local time (Wednesday morning in the UK) for a repatriation flight. 

British passengers with symptoms won’t be allowed on the plane and will be taken to a hospital in San Francisco instead.

It is unclear where the evacuated will land but it is not thought to be RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire or Boscombe Down in Wiltshire, where previous repatriated Britons have been quarantined.  

A British grandmother stuck on board said she was going ‘stir crazy’ and passengers were having to fight over ‘rotten food’.

Margaret Bartlett, 77, from Burnley, told the BBC: ‘The food is rotten and terrible and we have to fight for it. It is not good enough.

‘We are going stir crazy stuck in the cabin. It is a bit depressing when we saw land and it was sunny and we couldn’t get out. We are hoping something will get done. It is terrible.’  

Before the ship docked yesterday, Mrs Bartlett said she was ‘dreading’ being stuck on board as some Americans are taken off.

She told the BBC: ‘There is no reassurance that the ship is about to dock as I don’t think she is going to get off. My greatest fear is that they will be kept on that ship for two weeks.’   

Mrs Bartlett’s daughter Lyndsey Vickers said she was ‘very worried’ about her mother after a passenger who was staying 10 cabins away from the grandmother died from the killer infection. 

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS?

Someone who is infected with the coronavirus can spread it with just a simple cough or a sneeze, scientists say.

More than 4,000 people with the virus are now confirmed to have died and more than 110,000 have been infected. Here’s what we know so far:

What is the coronavirus? 

A coronavirus is a type of virus which can cause illness in animals and people. Viruses break into cells inside their host and use them to reproduce itself and disrupt the body’s normal functions. Coronaviruses are named after the Latin word ‘corona’, which means crown, because they are encased by a spiked shell which resembles a royal crown.

The coronavirus from Wuhan is one which has never been seen before this outbreak. It has been named SARS-CoV-2 by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses. The name stands for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2.

Experts say the bug, which has killed around one in 50 patients since the outbreak began in December, is a ‘sister’ of the SARS illness which hit China in 2002, so has been named after it.

The disease that the virus causes has been named COVID-19, which stands for coronavirus disease 2019.

Dr Helena Maier, from the Pirbright Institute, said: ‘Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that infect a wide range of different species including humans, cattle, pigs, chickens, dogs, cats and wild animals. 

‘Until this new coronavirus was identified, there were only six different coronaviruses known to infect humans. Four of these cause a mild common cold-type illness, but since 2002 there has been the emergence of two new coronaviruses that can infect humans and result in more severe disease (Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronaviruses). 

‘Coronaviruses are known to be able to occasionally jump from one species to another and that is what happened in the case of SARS, MERS and the new coronavirus. The animal origin of the new coronavirus is not yet known.’ 

The first human cases were publicly reported from the Chinese city of Wuhan, where approximately 11million people live, after medics first started publicly reporting infections on December 31.

By January 8, 59 suspected cases had been reported and seven people were in critical condition. Tests were developed for the new virus and recorded cases started to surge.

The first person died that week and, by January 16, two were dead and 41 cases were confirmed. The next day, scientists predicted that 1,700 people had become infected, possibly up to 7,000.

Just a week after that, there had been more than 800 confirmed cases and those same scientists estimated that some 4,000 – possibly 9,700 – were infected in Wuhan alone. By that point, 26 people had died. 

By January 27, more than 2,800 people were confirmed to have been infected, 81 had died, and estimates of the total number of cases ranged from 100,000 to 350,000 in Wuhan alone.

By January 29, the number of deaths had risen to 132 and cases were in excess of 6,000.  

By February 5, there were more than 24,000 cases and 492 deaths.

By February 11, this had risen to more than 43,000 cases and 1,000 deaths. 

A change in the way cases are confirmed on February 13 – doctors decided to start using lung scans as a formal diagnosis, as well as laboratory tests – caused a spike in the number of cases, to more than 60,000 and to 1,369 deaths.

By February 25, around 80,000 people had been infected and some 2,700 had died. February 25 was the first day in the outbreak when fewer cases were diagnosed within China than in the rest of the world. 

Where does the virus come from?

According to scientists, the virus almost certainly came from bats. Coronaviruses in general tend to originate in animals – the similar SARS and MERS viruses are believed to have originated in civet cats and camels, respectively.

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The first cases of COVID-19 came from people visiting or working in a live animal market in Wuhan, which has since been closed down for investigation.

Although the market is officially a seafood market, other dead and living animals were being sold there, including wolf cubs, salamanders, snakes, peacocks, porcupines and camel meat. 

A study by the Wuhan Institute of Virology, published in February 2020 in the scientific journal Nature, found that the genetic make-up virus samples found in patients in China is 96 per cent identical to a coronavirus they found in bats.

However, there were not many bats at the market so scientists say it was likely there was an animal which acted as a middle-man, contracting it from a bat before then transmitting it to a human. It has not yet been confirmed what type of animal this was.

Dr Michael Skinner, a virologist at Imperial College London, was not involved with the research but said: ‘The discovery definitely places the origin of nCoV in bats in China.

‘We still do not know whether another species served as an intermediate host to amplify the virus, and possibly even to bring it to the market, nor what species that host might have been.’  

So far the fatalities are quite low. Why are health experts so worried about it? 

Experts say the international community is concerned about the virus because so little is known about it and it appears to be spreading quickly.

It is similar to SARS, which infected 8,000 people and killed nearly 800 in an outbreak in Asia in 2003, in that it is a type of coronavirus which infects humans’ lungs. It is less deadly than SARS, however, which killed around one in 10 people, compared to approximately one in 50 for COVID-19.

Another reason for concern is that nobody has any immunity to the virus because they’ve never encountered it before. This means it may be able to cause more damage than viruses we come across often, like the flu or common cold.

Speaking at a briefing in January, Oxford University professor, Dr Peter Horby, said: ‘Novel viruses can spread much faster through the population than viruses which circulate all the time because we have no immunity to them.

‘Most seasonal flu viruses have a case fatality rate of less than one in 1,000 people. Here we’re talking about a virus where we don’t understand fully the severity spectrum but it’s possible the case fatality rate could be as high as two per cent.’

If the death rate is truly two per cent, that means two out of every 100 patients who get it will die. 

‘My feeling is it’s lower,’ Dr Horby added. ‘We’re probably missing this iceberg of milder cases. But that’s the current circumstance we’re in.

‘Two per cent case fatality rate is comparable to the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 so it is a significant concern globally.’

How does the virus spread?

The illness can spread between people just through coughs and sneezes, making it an extremely contagious infection. And it may also spread even before someone has symptoms.

It is believed to travel in the saliva and even through water in the eyes, therefore close contact, kissing, and sharing cutlery or utensils are all risky. 

Originally, people were thought to be catching it from a live animal market in Wuhan city. But cases soon began to emerge in people who had never been there, which forced medics to realise it was spreading from person to person.

There is now evidence that it can spread third hand – to someone from a person who caught it from another person.

What does the virus do to you? What are the symptoms?

Once someone has caught the COVID-19 virus it may take between two and 14 days, or even longer, for them to show any symptoms – but they may still be contagious during this time.

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If and when they do become ill, typical signs include a runny nose, a cough, sore throat and a fever (high temperature). The vast majority of patients will recover from these without any issues, and many will need no medical help at all.

In a small group of patients, who seem mainly to be the elderly or those with long-term illnesses, it can lead to pneumonia. Pneumonia is an infection in which the insides of the lungs swell up and fill with fluid. It makes it increasingly difficult to breathe and, if left untreated, can be fatal and suffocate people.

Figures are showing that young children do not seem to be particularly badly affected by the virus, which they say is peculiar considering their susceptibility to flu, but it is not clear why. 

What have genetic tests revealed about the virus? 

Scientists in China have recorded the genetic sequences of around 19 strains of the virus and released them to experts working around the world. 

This allows others to study them, develop tests and potentially look into treating the illness they cause.   

Examinations have revealed the coronavirus did not change much – changing is known as mutating – much during the early stages of its spread.

However, the director-general of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Gao Fu, said the virus was mutating and adapting as it spread through people.

This means efforts to study the virus and to potentially control it may be made extra difficult because the virus might look different every time scientists analyse it.   

More study may be able to reveal whether the virus first infected a small number of people then change and spread from them, or whether there were various versions of the virus coming from animals which have developed separately.

How dangerous is the virus?  

The virus has a death rate of around two per cent. This is a similar death rate to the Spanish Flu outbreak which, in 1918, went on to kill around 50million people.

Experts have been conflicted since the beginning of the outbreak about whether the true number of people who are infected is significantly higher than the official numbers of recorded cases. Some people are expected to have such mild symptoms that they never even realise they are ill unless they’re tested, so only the more serious cases get discovered, making the death toll seem higher than it really is.

However, an investigation into government surveillance in China said it had found no reason to believe this was true.

Dr Bruce Aylward, a World Health Organization official who went on a mission to China, said there was no evidence that figures were only showing the tip of the iceberg, and said recording appeared to be accurate, Stat News reported.

Can the virus be cured? 

The COVID-19 virus cannot be cured and it is proving difficult to contain.

Antibiotics do not work against viruses, so they are out of the question. Antiviral drugs can work, but the process of understanding a virus then developing and producing drugs to treat it would take years and huge amounts of money.

No vaccine exists for the coronavirus yet and it’s not likely one will be developed in time to be of any use in this outbreak, for similar reasons to the above.

The National Institutes of Health in the US, and Baylor University in Waco, Texas, say they are working on a vaccine based on what they know about coronaviruses in general, using information from the SARS outbreak. But this may take a year or more to develop, according to Pharmaceutical Technology.

Currently, governments and health authorities are working to contain the virus and to care for patients who are sick and stop them infecting other people.

People who catch the illness are being quarantined in hospitals, where their symptoms can be treated and they will be away from the uninfected public.

And airports around the world are putting in place screening measures such as having doctors on-site, taking people’s temperatures to check for fevers and using thermal screening to spot those who might be ill (infection causes a raised temperature).

However, it can take weeks for symptoms to appear, so there is only a small likelihood that patients will be spotted up in an airport.

Is this outbreak an epidemic or a pandemic?   

The outbreak is an epidemic, which is when a disease takes hold of one community such as a country or region. 

Although it has spread to dozens of countries, the outbreak is not yet classed as a pandemic, which is defined by the World Health Organization as the ‘worldwide spread of a new disease’.

The head of WHO’s global infectious hazard preparedness, Dr Sylvie Briand, said: ‘Currently we are not in a pandemic. We are at the phase where it is an epidemic with multiple foci, and we try to extinguish the transmission in each of these foci,’ the Guardian reported.

She said that most cases outside of Hubei had been ‘spillover’ from the epicentre, so the disease wasn’t actually spreading actively around the world.

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