There’s been a fair amount of news lately about norovirus on cruise ships and I have had some people ask me about it, so I thought it would be a good idea to give you some information and some resources. Basically, norovirus is a stomach flu. We hear about it mostly on cruise ships, but you can get norovirus anywhere, and you probably have at some point in your life. The link above takes you to the Center for Disease Control’s information page about norovirus.

The Center for Disease Control has a Vessel Sanitation Program where you can learn minute details about the ship on which you may be thinking about sailing. Cruise ships that fall within the purview of the Vessel Sanitation Program sail on voyages from 3-21 days and carry 100 or more passengers. Any time any of these ships has a sailing in which 3% or more of the passengers or crew report symptoms of gastrointestinal illness, the details must be reported to the CDC. You can view all reported incidents going back to 1994 here. What you’ll see is that no cruise ship is immune to norovirus, but you’ll also see that in some cases the numbers are quite low.

Norovirus on cruise ships is big news. What isn’t big news is some bug going around at your place of work or at your child’s school. It could be the same thing, norovirus, and the percentage infected could be even higher, but it doesn’t make the news. I say this not to minimize the issue, but just to let you know that your risk of getting sick on a cruise ship is really not much higher than anywhere else.

You can reduce your chances of getting sick by making sure you wash your hands frequently. Cruise ships actually make it easier for you by providing hand sanitizer before you board the ship and before you enter any place to eat. If you don’t want to get sick, use that stuff, whenever you see it.

The web site I provided above, plus this one, which provides sanitation inspection scores from the CDC for all cruise ships, can help you choose your cruise wisely. Make sure you click to read why cruise ships had points docked from their scores. Sometimes it’s something really bad – sometimes it’s really not.

You can also pay attention to the ship you’re on and their attention to cleanliness. Last June we were at a cruise-a-thon and toured a number of ships. One of the ships we toured required us to stand in line for over an hour and fill out forms stating whether we had any signs of illness in the last 4 days. When we got to the point where we could board the ship, they took the forms without looking at them and did not direct us to use the hand sanitizer that was at the entrance to the ship. This told me that the staff of this particular ship were not actually concerned with preventing the spread of illness. They had paperwork to prove that they were doing something but, unlike every other ship we boarded, they did not make us wash our hands before boarding the ship.

I’ll end with a story I just heard about someone who became ill with a stomach virus the night before boarding a cruise ship. She boarded the ship and ignored signs all over the ship asking passengers experiencing any gastrointestinal illness to report to the ship’s doctor. After two days of illness she finally did report to the doctor. Needless to say, they were very unhappy with her for waiting. She was quarantined to her room for one day and brought stomach-friendly foods like rice and other white things.

The cruiselines can take all the precautions in the world, but there is nothing they can do about someone who chooses to walk about the ship sick and infect others. I urge you to think about others if you become sick. They may quarantine you, which means you can’t leave your room, but they’ll also bring you food and wait on you hand and foot. I know my girl doesn’t do that for me! My partner did actually develop a nasty cold once on a cruise ship and quarantined herself. She reports that if she has to be sick, she’d rather be sick on a cruise ship than anywhere else. She had everything she needed brought to her and all she had to do was lie about. There are certainly worse things in the world.