Cruise ship carrying ex-Kentucky university president, wife docks in Fla; 2 dead
A cruise ship carrying nearly 1,900 crew members and passengers, including the former president of Eastern Kentucky University and his wife, docked in Florida Saturday morning with two people dead.
Former EKU President Doug Whitlock said in a Facebook comment Saturday morning that the captain of the Coral Princess had announced two deaths aboard the ship.
Whitlock said in an interview that he and his wife, Joanne, hoped to disembark on Sunday.
The ship, carrying 1,020 passengers and 878 crew members, had seven cases of coronavirus among passengers and five among crew members as of Thursday, a Princess Cruises spokeswoman told the Associated Press.
Princess Cruises said that after the ship docked in Miami, passengers who needed hospitalization would get off first, the Associated Press reported.
On Sunday, passengers who are able to fly will begin leaving, while people showing signs of illness will stay aboard until the ship’s doctors say they can leave, according to the AP.
Whitlock said that he and his wife had seen ambulances from their balcony that had arrived Saturday to take ill passengers from the ship.
He said they had been told that Florida residents would disembark later Saturday.
Whitlock said the remaining passengers would undergo health screenings on Sunday, and those able to travel would get on buses that would take them directly to the airport, where they would board planes chartered by Princess.
From there, Whitlock said they expected to fly to a major airport to board a flight home.
“Princess is making flight arrangements,” he said.
Once back in Richmond, Whitlock said the couple will quarantine themselves at home.
He said at least four other Kentuckians were on the cruise.
When the couple left Kentucky March 1, there had been no confirmed cases of coronavirus in the state, and no cases in Chile or Argentina, Whitlock said Saturday.
“Joanne and I talked about that a lot before we traveled,” he said.
The Whitlocks boarded the Coral Princess in Chile on March 5, expecting to get off in Argentina on March 19.
Instead, government authorities there refused to allow anyone off the ship except those with Argentinian passports and those scheduled to fly out the same day, he said in an interview earlier this week.
The ship then left Buenos Aires. On Tuesday, after some people began exhibiting flu-like symptoms, passengers were told to remain in their rooms, Whitlock said. Meals were delivered to them by room service.
“Princess is taking good care of us,” he said.
Whitlock worked at Eastern Kentucky University for more than 40 years and spent six years as president before retiring in 2013.
Since 2009, he said he and his wife have taken 36 cruises, and they don’t plan to let this one keep them from future trips.
“We’ll cruise again,” Whitlock said, “but not this year.”
The Coast Guard said in a news release Saturday that over the past three weeks, it has overseen the movement of more than 250,000 passengers off of more than 120 ships as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hundreds of passengers began disembarking from the cruise ships Vaandam and Rotterdam at Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Friday. Forteen were reportedly critically ill, according to the AP.
The Coast Guard said 93,000 crew members are still aboard 114 cruise ships “either in or near U.S. ports and waters.”
“The cruise industry has an ongoing obligation for the care, safety and welfare of their seafarers,” the Coast Guard said.
The CDC issued a “No Sail” order on March 14, a day after most of the cruise lines voluntarily suspended their operations from U.S. ports.
This story was originally published April 4, 2020 at 2:07 PM.
