The dread and anguish aboard Holland America’s MS Zaandam as Covid ravaged through passengers and crew are described in the new book Cabin Fever as reported by Bloomberg.
Harrowing situation
At 5 a.m., George Covrig walked into the packed kitchen of the cruise ship MS Zaandam and asked in a booming voice, “What do you need?”
Covid-19 was tearing through the Zaandam, and Covrig was one of a dozen crew members from the MS Rotterdam, a sister ship in the Holland America Line fleet, who’d come aboard to help.
It was Covrig’s first shift in the kitchen.
A woman from housekeeping, starting yet another 14-hour shift delivering meals, began to sob. “She seemed unable to fathom how anyone would volunteer to help them out of this harrowing mess.”
Some wore surgical masks, labouring for each breath.
Covid Buster
The servers were a haggard mix of waiters and housekeepers, aided by Erin Montgomery, the ship’s sanitation officer—the only officer to volunteer for dish duty.
Her long blond hair was matted down from the steamy heat.
The remaining cooks worked double shifts.
The food service and hotel managers gave Covrig and the other volunteers simple orders: “Put on a mask, gloves, and apron, take one of the trolleys and deliver meals.”
They jokingly referred to this as the “Covid Buster.”
They walked the silent corridors of the ship for hours each day, leaving a cloud of disinfectant.
Unseen dangers
Unseen dangers were starting to get inside crew members’ heads.
Through the thin walls of her cabin, Anne Weggeman, who worked at the ship’s reception desk, could hear everything—muffled voices, shrieks of anger, and the coughing.
Somewhere, maybe next door, someone was hacking uncontrollably.
Returning to the guest on the line, she suggested, “How about we take a couple of breaths.
We all are dealing with this in our own way.”
Promoters
He made a point of being straightforward with his passengers.
Some cruise ship captains rose to power by being brash self-promoters.
They basked in the spotlight given a commanding officer.
But when push came to shove on a decision, he made a point of reminding the brass back on shore that they weren’t on the ship—he was.
Now, Smit took a deep breath and activated the public-address system: “May I have your attention, please?
Unfortunately, three of our fellow guests have passed away.”
Cause
No one knew what was causing the sickness.
But she’d maintained a sliver of hope that this was something less deadly sweeping through the ship, and that had kept her going.
With those words, a meltdown spread across the kitchen.
One woman balled up on the floor near Montgomery, sobbing.
When he’d decided to come aboard with the other volunteers from the Rotterdam, he’d assumed it might be Covid-19 that was making people sick.
The announcement about Covid on the Zaandam produced a crisis at the highest level of the Panamanian government.
Panama outbreak
Days before, the Ministry of Health had banned any ship from entering the Panama Canal if there was even a single confirmed Covid-19 case aboard.
The authorities feared the virus might infect the canal pilots, the only people trained and authorized to bring a ship through the channel.
If Panama had been aware of the outbreak earlier, it could have kept the ships out of Panamanian waters.
These people were denied the medical care that might have saved them by all the countries that turned our ship away.
Now it was up to the Panamanian government.
Should Panama offer the help its neighbours had refused?
Political fallout
On the morning of March 28, the Panamanian government approved the expedited passages of the Zaandam and the Rotterdam.
To minimize contact between dockworkers and the crew aboard the cruise ships, the government authorized the Zaandam and the Rotterdam to skip the traditional older locks system and transit through the faster neo-Panamax locks finished in 2016.
That guidance system employed at least a dozen labourers, known as the tie-down team.
All told, the operation would take 12 hours.
Should the operation fail, should the canal be infected, blocked, or stalled, it would produce untold political fallout.
After dark, the tropical heat would be more manageable for the volunteer pilots, who were required to wear so much stifling hazardous-duty gear, that it looked like they were preparing to inspect a nuclear plant.
Strict rules
For the passage to be as inconspicuous as possible all aboard had to follow strict rules.
Smit turned on the PA system to instruct the passengers: If there was to be any chance of passing through the canal, he needed full compliance.
All passengers were directed to remain in their cabins.
No one was to walk in the hallways or step out on the balconies.
No American port had yet agreed to let the ship dock.
Even as the ships steamed north, there was no way to know when those aboard would reach dry land.
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Source: Bloomberg
