A Costa Cruises ship with around 7,000 people onboard is being held off the coast of Italy after a Chinese woman fell ill with a suspected coronavirus case. Costa Smeralda is currently being held in Port Civitavecchia (35 mi / 56 km north of Rome) after a 54-year-old female passenger from Macau came down with a fever.
The woman, who hasn't been identified, contacted ship's medics Wednesday night reporting respiratory problems and raised temperature. She and her husband, who does not have symptoms, were placed in solitary confinement and tested for the coronavirus. Other passengers were barred from leaving the cruise ship until the results come back.
The ship is carrying around 6,000 cruise passengers, along with 1,000 crew. Of those, 751 are thought to be from China, of which 374 embarked in Savona, Italy. Costa Smeralda had a 7-day itinerary with a number of stops scheduled in ports across the Western Mediterranean.
For other Costa Smeralda accidents and incidents see at the ship's CruiseMinus page.
For Coronavirus updates on cruise ship quarantines (infected passengers and crew) and top-pandemic countries (COVID-19 cases and deaths, daily updated statistics) see at CruiseMapper's Norovirus page.