Cruise ship with Covid-19 patients on board reaches Mumbai

The Cordelia cruise ship with 66 COVID-19 patients on board reached Mumbai from Goa on Tuesday evening, BMC officials said.

The cruise liner anchored at a passenger terminal in Ballard Pier in South Mumbai at around 6.30 pm and a team of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and police personnel have reached the spot, they said.

The BMC has arranged five ambulances, each of them 17-seater, to ferry coronavirus positive patients to a COVID-19 care centre, the officials said.

They also have the option of quarantining themselves at hotels at their own expense, they said. Earlier, the civic body had said all coronavirus positive people on board the cruise ship will be quarantined in Mumbai, while others will have to undergo RT-PCR tests before disembarking.

Non-coronavirus passengers will be allowed to disembark from the ship only after their test report shows negative result, but they will have to remain in home isolation for a week, the BMC said. RT-PCR testing on the ship will be done by two labs and their reports are expected by 9 am on Wednesday, it added. As many as 66 of the over 2,000 people on board the cruise ship have tested positive for COVID-19, officials have said.