After returning from a New Years' trip, Princess Cruise's 'Ruby Princess' offloaded infected passengers into the city of San Francisco, home of the leaning Millennium Tower, before the floating incubator headed back to Mexico for more.
The Ruby Princess became notorious at the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 when it docked in Sydney, Australia, and all of its passengers were allowed to disembark despite the disease being rife on board, which led to a criminal inquiry of the "plague ship."
The same ship docked in San Francisco on Thursday after a 10-day New Years party voyage—to Mexico and back—ended in a dozen passengers testing positive on board. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the city's port confirmed that a total of 724 passengers have left the ship, including the 12 passengers who returned positive test results.
Apparently, this is just the procedure. Princess knew people were infected, it sounds like they did very little to test them and simply sent them home hoping they'll work it out on their own.
The positive cases came to light after, under a local health mandate, the cruise line randomly tested 25 percent of all passengers who planned to leave the ship at San Francisco, returning a dozen positive results. Negin Kamali, a spokesperson for Princess Cruises, said vaccination rates among guests on the Ruby Princess were "approaching 100 percent."
But a woman on board claimed the outbreak was identified earlier among the performers on the cruise, leading to canceled shows and in-cabin quarantines. "It was kind of disturbing that there wasn't more widespread announcements about that… I think the only reason they announced that is because the shows were canceled," Diane Castillo told NBC News.
