Speaker 1: I'm Carol Masser and I'm Jason Kelly. It's time for
Speaker 1: one of this week's feature stories. Well, there were lots
Speaker 1: of cruise ship outbreaks early in the COVID nineteen pandemic. None, however,
Speaker 1: killed nearly as many as Carnival's Ruby Princess. Twenty eight
Speaker 1: people died of the illness or spread the virus so far,
Speaker 1: That's right, Jason and our March nineteen fifty foot ship
Speaker 1: docked in Sydney, Australia after a ten day journey around
Speaker 1: New Zealand. Despite the accelerating COVID nineteen pandemic, Australian officials
Speaker 1: cleared the Ruby to disembark, a decision that would have
Speaker 1: profound consequences once the two thousand, six hundred plus passengers
Speaker 1: had left the ship and Carol. Unlike the other cruise
Speaker 1: ship outbreaks, the Ruby was a devastating incubator, discovered only
Speaker 1: after passengers were off the ship. Many immediately began traveling home,
Speaker 1: catching flights before international borders were closed. By the evening
Speaker 1: of Friday, March twenty, contact tracers had managed to reach
Speaker 1: only forty four of the five hundred and seventy international guests,
Speaker 1: and then Jason and the months that have followed, the
Speaker 1: New South Wales government convened a high profile public inquiry.
Speaker 1: The New South Wales Police Force still engage in a
Speaker 1: lengthy investigation, and lawsuits in Australian California are only now
Speaker 1: in their early stages. It all began with a super
Speaker 1: spreader of a cruise ship in a time of transformation.
Speaker 1: UL knows that trust is necessary for innovation and business success.
Speaker 1: We use science and data driven insights to help you
Speaker 1: build the trust. Stakeholders demand. The future relies on trust,
Speaker 1: and UEL empowers it. Learn more and access free research
Speaker 1: at UL dot com slash Trust Cruise Ship zero. How
Speaker 1: were hundreds of people with COVID nineteen allowed to step
Speaker 1: off a Carnival liner in Sydney and return to their
Speaker 1: homes around the world By Matthew Campbell. At about six
Speaker 1: am on March nine, William Wright, a retired Australian mortgage broker,
Speaker 1: woke up feeling a little off. He had a cough
Speaker 1: and his nose was running, though it didn't seem too
Speaker 1: bad in any case, there was no time to linger
Speaker 1: in bed. Right and his wife Flucia, had just docked
Speaker 1: in Sydney after a ten day journey around New Zealand
Speaker 1: on the Ruby Princess, a nine and fifty ft hundred
Speaker 1: and forty two cabin vessel operated by Carnivals Princess Cruizes subsidiary.
Speaker 1: The couple's disembarkation time was eight oh five am, so
Speaker 1: they quickly packed up and had breakfast. They arrived on
Speaker 1: schedule in the Explorers Lounge, the nightclub, where they'd been
Speaker 1: told to assemble with other passengers leaving at the same time.
Speaker 1: Unloading a cruise ship is a complex process and delays
Speaker 1: aren't unusual, but the Rights waited only a short while
Speaker 1: before being told they could go. They made their way
Speaker 1: through the corridors, past crew members, waving goodbye and offering
Speaker 1: high fives. Getting through Sydney's Overseas Passenger Terminal took only
Speaker 1: a few minutes. Despite the accelerating COVID nineteen pandemic, Australian
Speaker 1: officials had cleared the Ruby to disembark without restrictions. Passengers
Speaker 1: didn't even need to show their passport, let alone get
Speaker 1: their temperature checked. The only paperwork was an Gracian form
Speaker 1: that border guards glanced at before waving people through. By
Speaker 1: eight thirty the Rights were on the street, where plus
Speaker 1: passengers had begun filtering into taxis, commuter trains, and densely
Speaker 1: packed airport buses. I am a regular traveler overseas by
Speaker 1: flights and cruises. Right later, said in a statement to investigators,
Speaker 1: I have never experienced something so fast. The decision to
Speaker 1: allow the Ruby to dock would have profound consequences. The
Speaker 1: ship turned out to be the single most important vector
Speaker 1: for the coronavirus in Australia, accounting at one point for
Speaker 1: more than ten percent of the country's cases. In Tasmania,
Speaker 1: two cruisers were the probable source of an outbreak so
Speaker 1: severe it forced a major hospital to shut down. Other
Speaker 1: infected passengers flew to the US, where some ultimately died.
Speaker 1: The crew meanwhile became virtual prisoners on their own vessel,
Speaker 1: some unable to return home for months. Although multiple cruise
Speaker 1: ships recorded large numbers of COVID nineteen cases in the
Speaker 1: early stages of the pandemic, the Ruby was unique, and
Speaker 1: not simply because twenty eight people died of the illness,
Speaker 1: the most of any voyage to other notorious carnival ships,
Speaker 1: the Diamond Princess, which was sealed off for weeks on
Speaker 1: a Japanese Pier and the Zan Dam, which sailed up
Speaker 1: the entire west coast of South America looking for a
Speaker 1: country that would allow it to dock, were vessels that
Speaker 1: guests couldn't leave. The Ruby was the opposite, the incubator
Speaker 1: of a devastating outbreak, discovered only after passengers were on
Speaker 1: dry land. In an emailed statement, Princess said that our
Speaker 1: highest responsibility and our top priority is always the safety,
Speaker 1: health and well being of our guests, crew members, and
Speaker 1: the people in the communities we visit, and that it
Speaker 1: fully complied with public health guidance throughout the Ruby's travels.
Speaker 1: As new information became available from global health authorities, we
Speaker 1: continually adapted our policies and protocols to reflect the latest
Speaker 1: updated thinking with respect to COVID eighteen. When the Ruby
Speaker 1: set sail, the company said there was no reported community
Speaker 1: spread of COVID nineteen in Australia that changed emphatically after
Speaker 1: the ship docked. Until then, the country, with its isolated
Speaker 1: geography and excellent health care system, had seemed poised to
Speaker 1: escape the worst of the pandemic. The ensuing fiasco has
Speaker 1: prompted a series of efforts to figure out what went
Speaker 1: wrong and whom to blame. The ensuing fiasco has prompted
Speaker 1: a series of efforts to figure out what went wrong
Speaker 1: and whom to blame. The new South Wales government convened
Speaker 1: a high profile public inquiry, and police are in the
Speaker 1: midst of an investigation led by homicide detectives. Lawsuits by
Speaker 1: passengers are also under way. Everyone is trying to answer
Speaker 1: a central question, how at a moment when governments around
Speaker 1: the world were on high alert, where hundreds of infected
Speaker 1: people allowed to stroll off a cruise ship and into
Speaker 1: the heart of Sydney. Circular Quay might be the most
Speaker 1: spectacular place in the world to begin as the voyage.
Speaker 1: Lying at the foot of Sydney's financial district, It's bound
Speaker 1: on one side by the Rocks, one of the continent's
Speaker 1: earliest European settlements. Beyond that is the soaring arch of
Speaker 1: the Harbor Bridge, and just opposite the white concrete sales
Speaker 1: of the city's famed opera house. None of the thousands
Speaker 1: of passengers who crowded the Quays cruise port to board
Speaker 1: the Ruby on March eighth appeared deterred by the growing
Speaker 1: alarm over the novel coronavirus. Although Australians were getting nervous,
Speaker 1: shops in Sydney had begun to run out of hand
Speaker 1: sanitizer and canned food, and arrivals from China, Iran and
Speaker 1: South Korea had been banned. The country had only a
Speaker 1: handful of cases. In New Zealand, where the thirteen day
Speaker 1: Cruise was heading, there were even fewer. Stephen and Rosie Keel,
Speaker 1: retirees from Tasmania, arrived around twelve thirty PM to start
Speaker 1: a voyage celebrating Rosie's seventieth birthday. Shortly after they reached
Speaker 1: the terminal, Princess made an announcement boarding would be delayed
Speaker 1: until at least the late afternoon. We went up to
Speaker 1: Circular Quay and found a nice little pub. Stephen recalls
Speaker 1: the whole discussion, as you can imagine, was about the virus,
Speaker 1: and we unfortunately took the attitude, oh, this won't happen
Speaker 1: to us. The rates are very low. Rosie posed for
Speaker 1: photos with the Ruby's bow overhead. Stephen wanted to edit
Speaker 1: them so the whole would read Princess Rosie. What they
Speaker 1: didn't know was that at dawn that morning, just after
Speaker 1: the ship pulled in from its previous cruise, a government
Speaker 1: epidemiologist named Kelly and Wrestler had boarded with seven other staff.
Speaker 1: They carried suitcases full of masks, gloves, and testing swabs.
Speaker 1: The new South Wales Health Agency wanted to screen arriving
Speaker 1: passengers who appeared to be at risk of having COVID nineteen,
Speaker 1: whether because they had reported respiratory symptoms or had recently
Speaker 1: been in an affected country. Wrestler was shocked by the
Speaker 1: number she found gathered in a dining room, more than
Speaker 1: three hundred in all. She and her team handed out masks,
Speaker 1: took temperatures, and asked about travel histories. They decided to
Speaker 1: test nine people for the virus and allow the others
Speaker 1: to disembark until the results came in. A doctor told
Speaker 1: the crew new passengers shouldn't be allowed on board. At
Speaker 1: five thirty p m. The tests came back all negative,
Speaker 1: the Ruby was cleared to depart on its next cruise.
Speaker 1: Boarding proceeded, and the ship left its berth late in
Speaker 1: the evening, easing past the Opera House and out of
Speaker 1: the harbor. Some guests watched from their balconies the lights
Speaker 1: of the city fading as they reached the open Pacific
Speaker 1: Diane Fish, a travel agent from Delray Beach, Florida, would
Speaker 1: have been content to spend the two day passage to
Speaker 1: New Zealand sleeping. She'd been on the road since late February,
Speaker 1: leading a group of clients through a packed itinerary around Australia,
Speaker 1: but the cruise was part of the trip, so she
Speaker 1: settled into her usual roles as tour director and social convener,
Speaker 1: checking out the on board entertainment and making sure everyone
Speaker 1: was having a good time. The bad news from overseas
Speaker 1: was mounting. Italy had imposed a nationwide locked down on
Speaker 1: March nine, and President Trump soon imposed an unprecedented ban
Speaker 1: on European arrivals to the United States. Fish wasn't too anxious,
Speaker 1: given that she was thousands of miles away from any
Speaker 1: known outbreak. It just did not occur to me that
Speaker 1: we weren't safe where we were, she says. But she
Speaker 1: did ask a colleague to be prepared to help rearrange
Speaker 1: her group's travel if the cruise was halted in New Zealand.
Speaker 1: There was plenty to occupy passengers on the way across
Speaker 1: the Tasman Sea. Launched in two thousand and eight, the
Speaker 1: Ruby was far from Princess's newest or biggest chip, but
Speaker 1: it was still impressive. It had nineteen decks, four swimming pools,
Speaker 1: and dozens of restaurants and attractions, many of them arrayed
Speaker 1: around a central atrium called the Piazza, inspired, as Princess's
Speaker 1: marketing copy optimistically put it, by the vibrant squares of Europe.
Speaker 1: The Rubies Italian captain Giorgio Pomata, was the commodore of
Speaker 1: the entire Princess fleet. After arriving in New Zealand, the
Speaker 1: ship passed first through fior Land, a region of spectacular
Speaker 1: mountain bays in the far southwest, before stopping in Dunedin.
Speaker 1: The Ruby then began port hopping northward, with the final
Speaker 1: stop in the Bay of Islands planned for March eighteenth.
Speaker 1: After arriving in New Zealand, the ship passed first through
Speaker 1: fiord Land, a region of spectacular mountain bays in the
Speaker 1: far southwest, before stopping in Dunedin. The Ruby then began
Speaker 1: port hopping northward, with the final stop in the Bay
Speaker 1: of Islands planned for March eighteenth. On March fifteenth, the
Speaker 1: Ruby stopped in Napier, on the edge of North Island
Speaker 1: Wine Country, and throngs of passengers spilled into town, hitting
Speaker 1: souvenir shops and piling onto tour buses. The same day,
Speaker 1: Australia's Prime Minister, Scott Morrison announced that his country was
Speaker 1: significantly stepping up its efforts to keep out the coronavirus.
Speaker 1: Everyone arriving from overseas would have to spend fourteen days
Speaker 1: in isolation, no matter where they were traveling from. Cruise
Speaker 1: ship arrivals from foreign ports would be banned. As of midnight,
Speaker 1: no one at Carnival's regional office was sure what the
Speaker 1: announcement meant for vessels such as the Ruby, which was
Speaker 1: carrying a large number of Australian passengers, but that evening
Speaker 1: an announcement went out over the ship's public address system
Speaker 1: the crews would head straight back to Sydney. Stephen Keel,
Speaker 1: an accomplished sailor, had been tracking the Ruby's progress online,
Speaker 1: and he soon noticed the bridge crew was flooring it,
Speaker 1: traveling at twenty four or twenty five knots instead of
Speaker 1: the eighteen or so on the way to New Zealand.
Speaker 1: In the aftermath of the Diamond Princess, Carnival managers were
Speaker 1: well aware of what could happen to the ship if
Speaker 1: it was delayed. We don't want to get yourselves stranded
Speaker 1: anywhere or have a protest at a port due to
Speaker 1: cruise ships in the region. A Sydney based executive route
Speaker 1: to Commodore Pomata. The passenger experience, meanwhile, remained largely unchanged,
Speaker 1: with social distancing still a novel concept outside of China. Restaurants,
Speaker 1: bars and other attractions stayed open. Crowded St. Patrick's Day
Speaker 1: celebrations went ahead. Back in sid Me, officials were assessing
Speaker 1: whether and how to let the Ruby dock. The state
Speaker 1: government's criteria for determining whether a cruise ship could be
Speaker 1: carrying the virus were based on where passengers had traveled previously,
Speaker 1: where they'd been on their current trip, and crucially, what
Speaker 1: share of them had reported influenza like illness or i
Speaker 1: l I, generally understood to refer to a fever and
Speaker 1: respiratory symptoms. If the number exceeded one percent of the
Speaker 1: guests and crew, and if onboard tests for influenza showed
Speaker 1: that not to be the culprit, a vessel might be
Speaker 1: deemed high risk and everyone kept on the ship until
Speaker 1: coronavirus swabs could be tested by an onshore lab. A
Speaker 1: medium risk landing, such as the Ruby's March eighth the
Speaker 1: Rival flagged in part because some passengers had been in Singapore,
Speaker 1: involved a more flexible menu of responses, whereas in a
Speaker 1: low risk scenario passengers could disembark normally. On the morning
Speaker 1: of March eighteenth, the day before the Ruby was due
Speaker 1: to arrive, Wrestler, the government epidemiologist, was copied on an
Speaker 1: email from the ship's senior doctor, Ilse von Watsdorff. It
Speaker 1: answered a list of questions about passenger travel histories and conditions,
Speaker 1: Noting that medical staff had collected swabs for a few
Speaker 1: cases of febrile influenza test negative individuals. Von Wattsdorff had
Speaker 1: attached the required spreadsheet listing the names, conditions, and temperatures
Speaker 1: of passengers with flu like symptoms. The decision on how
Speaker 1: to treat the Ruby lay not with Wrestler, but with
Speaker 1: a separate panel of public health experts. They didn't find
Speaker 1: the numbers alarming. Many patients had come to the medical
Speaker 1: clinic during the journey back, but that might have been
Speaker 1: explained by announcements instructing passengers with coughs or other respiratory
Speaker 1: issues to get checked, rather than because the virus was spreading.
Speaker 1: No one had recently been to the highest risk countries,
Speaker 1: and the I ll I ratio was a bit below
Speaker 1: one percent, with a considerable number of people testing positive
Speaker 1: for the flu. The panel determined that the ruby was
Speaker 1: low risk, but advised that swabs from some of the
Speaker 1: symptomatic passengers be tested for corona iris just in case.
Speaker 1: On board, things were getting weird. As the boat neared
Speaker 1: Port Percy, Anderson, a seventy five year old from Queensland,
Speaker 1: entered an elevator to find a heavy set, younger man
Speaker 1: in a hoodie zipped all the way up to cover
Speaker 1: his mouth and nose. The woman with him was wearing
Speaker 1: a surgical mask and both appeared to be having trouble breathing.
Speaker 1: Anderson and his wife Esther, exchanged a glance but didn't
Speaker 1: say anything. He later told investigators. Another passenger, Paul Reid,
Speaker 1: recalled going to the clinic with a cough and a
Speaker 1: sore throat. He said a doctor swabbed his nose and
Speaker 1: soon told him you don't have corona. Reid assumed that
Speaker 1: meant he was negative for COVID nineteen, but the medical
Speaker 1: team had no ability to perform such a test. Fish
Speaker 1: was still hoping to relax. She booked a treatment at
Speaker 1: the SPA in anticipation of the long journey back to Florida. Afterwards,
Speaker 1: she felt strange, stiff, and so tired that I didn't
Speaker 1: want to get up the next day. She figured it
Speaker 1: was the fatigue of the trip catching up to her.
Speaker 1: Late on March eighteenth, a call came into Vessel Traffic
Speaker 1: Services VTS, the office responsible for managing movements in Sydney Harbor.
Speaker 1: Someone from the State Ambulance Service was on the line
Speaker 1: requesting an update on the Ruby apport. Manager Cameron butchert
Speaker 1: found the call unusual. Ambulances were frequently dispatched to cruise
Speaker 1: arrivals given the medical problems that could befall elderly passengers,
Speaker 1: but the office rarely got a heads up. Butcher called
Speaker 1: back to find out more. We've got two bookings here
Speaker 1: for Carnival Australia for a cruise ship that's coming in
Speaker 1: at two thirty with two suspected corona pations on board.
Speaker 1: An ambulance coordinator told him, we just wanted to know
Speaker 1: if the ship was actually coming into port and if
Speaker 1: they're allowed to disembark. The ambulance officials said they'd reached
Speaker 1: out to their contact at Carnival but got only voicemail. Alarmed,
Speaker 1: Butcher hung up and started calling people at Carnival. No
Speaker 1: one answered. He emailed a colleague and asked him to
Speaker 1: stop the Ruby from docking. Advised the ship that their
Speaker 1: booking is denied. He wrote there to have their agent
Speaker 1: contact Sydney VTS urgently. Port officials ultimately reached Carnival staff.
Speaker 1: According to investigative documents, they said they'd requested the ambulances
Speaker 1: for a passenger with severe leg pain and another with
Speaker 1: cardiac trouble, not because of suspected coronavirus infections. Given that
Speaker 1: and the Health Agency's designation, the port authority agreed that
Speaker 1: the Ruby was clear to land. At two thirty am,
Speaker 1: it moored at Circular Quay. Disembarkation would begin first thing
Speaker 1: in the morning. By nine a m. The sidewalk outside
Speaker 1: the terminal was dense with passengers. Anderson and his wife
Speaker 1: had a flight later that day to Brisbane, so they
Speaker 1: took a packed bus to Sydney Airport. They were in
Speaker 1: the check in queue when they noticed a commotion behind them.
Speaker 1: A woman had collapsed, Anderson immediately recognized her and the
Speaker 1: man kneeling at her side as the pair he'd seen
Speaker 1: laboring to breathe in the Ruby Princess Elevator. Paramedics soon
Speaker 1: arrived with a stretcher. Phi had also boarded a bus
Speaker 1: to the airport with other passengers. I sat down, leaving
Speaker 1: some space, she says, and I hear the lady in
Speaker 1: front of me cough. Two seconds after that, the guy
Speaker 1: behind me coughs, then the guy to my right, and
Speaker 1: I said to my husband, everyone on this bus is sick. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Wrestler was waiting for the results of the swab tests
Speaker 1: from the Ruby, most of them for passengers who had
Speaker 1: already scattered. That afternoon, she logged on to an online
Speaker 1: lab portal to check if they were done. They weren't.
Speaker 1: They hadn't even been registered in the system. She phoned
Speaker 1: the lab and was told they'd be tested soon. Early
Speaker 1: the next morning, she logged in again. Three of the
Speaker 1: swabs she saw were positive. One was from a crew
Speaker 1: member still on board, another was from a Tasmanian guest.
Speaker 1: The third was from a woman named Leslie Bacon, who
Speaker 1: had been one of the patients taken off in an
Speaker 1: ambulance suffering from leg pain. Von Wattsdorff had told health
Speaker 1: authorities that both passengers also had respiratory symptoms. The ruby
Speaker 1: Stler was learning too late, had been anything but low risk.
Speaker 1: The state government rushed to deploy contact tracers, and officials
Speaker 1: convened conference calls to figure out what had gone wrong.
Speaker 1: Time was growing short to contain the spread. Towards the
Speaker 1: end of the day, Wrestler noticed something odd. Some of
Speaker 1: the people who'd been tested for coronavirus weren't on the
Speaker 1: list of symptomatic passengers and crew sent on March eighteenth.
Speaker 1: By this point, there were at least four positive results,
Speaker 1: including one for the other patients who'd left in an ambulance.
Speaker 1: Wrestler sent to WhatsApp message to von Watsdorff. Do you
Speaker 1: have an updated a r I log, she asked, referring
Speaker 1: to acute respiratory illness. Some of the later people swabbed
Speaker 1: aren't on the one I have. Did you add any
Speaker 1: more patients after you sent it to me? Von Wattsdorff
Speaker 1: responded six minutes later, I'll send it now. Sorry, I
Speaker 1: forgot that. The last one was from the morning. It
Speaker 1: was so crazy. The updated numbers weren't drastically higher, but
Speaker 1: they did differ in one crucial respect. The I ll
Speaker 1: I ratio was almost one point three percent, well above
Speaker 1: the one percent threshold that indicated a higher level of risk.
Speaker 1: The Ruby had also been updating a separate government platform
Speaker 1: with information on reported passenger illnesses until early evening on
Speaker 1: March eighteenth, but Wrestler later testified that she wasn't aware
Speaker 1: of that data. I keep on asking myself what I
Speaker 1: could have done better to protect people, Von Watsdorff wrote
Speaker 1: to Wrestler that night. Wrestler replied almost immediately, Yeah, there
Speaker 1: will be more cases, probably a lot. The Rubies passengers
Speaker 1: were all over Australia and beyond, having in some cases
Speaker 1: caught the final flights before international boarders closed. Carnival had
Speaker 1: provided officials with a list of emails and phone numbers
Speaker 1: so everyone could be reached, but the details weren't all correct,
Speaker 1: and some passengers didn't pick up their phones or had
Speaker 1: turned them off. By the evening of Friday, March twentie,
Speaker 1: contact tracers had managed to reach only forty four of
Speaker 1: the five seven the international guests they'd tried over the weekend.
Speaker 1: Quantas Airways reported to officials that one seventy close contacts
Speaker 1: from the Ruby Princess had flown to the US on
Speaker 1: March twenty feet. It was only the following night that
Speaker 1: the Australian Border Force put Ruby passengers on a list
Speaker 1: that would prompt a do not board alert at check
Speaker 1: in desks. Fish had been unaware of the positive cases
Speaker 1: when she boarded her flight back to the US on
Speaker 1: March nineteenth. She found out only when she landed in
Speaker 1: San Francisco for her connection to Florida, and some of
Speaker 1: her group got contact tracing calls. As it happened, she'd
Speaker 1: begun feeling sick, herself really sick. The airport was almost deserted,
Speaker 1: and she found an isolated bench, laid down her head
Speaker 1: and went to sleep. I knew I had a fever.
Speaker 1: I just sat away from everyone else, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to get tested as soon as possible, she says. After
Speaker 1: getting home, Fish slept for almost twelve hours straight. When
Speaker 1: she woke up, she found an urgent care center that
Speaker 1: could test her. The results confirmed her suspicions. She was positive.
Speaker 1: Her husband turned out to be as well. I was
Speaker 1: in bed for ten days, she says, it knocks you out.
Speaker 1: All you wanna do is sleep and sweat. Positive tests
Speaker 1: from the Ruby were popping up all over Australia too,
Speaker 1: right the former mortgage broker thought he had a cold
Speaker 1: when he reached his home south of Sydney, so he
Speaker 1: took some flue pills and an antihistamine. Two days later,
Speaker 1: a friend who had also been on the cruise called
Speaker 1: her husband had been taken to the hospital in an
Speaker 1: ambulance suffering from complications of COVID nineteen. The rights got tested.
Speaker 1: Both were positive. They recovered without complications. Another two Ruby passengers,
Speaker 1: Graham Lake, a seventy two year old Vietnam veteran, and
Speaker 1: his wife Carla, were self isolating at home near Brisbane.
Speaker 1: They'd heard on March twentieth that a friend who'd been
Speaker 1: on board had tested positive for the coronavirus. Carla had
Speaker 1: a dry cough herself, but that wasn't unusual. It was
Speaker 1: a sight of act of medication she took for her arthritis. Still,
Speaker 1: the couple went to a makeshift clinic outside a local hospital.
Speaker 1: The staff wouldn't give Graham a test because he didn't
Speaker 1: have symptoms, but Carla got one. She also had a fever,
Speaker 1: and the hospital kept her to wait for the results.
Speaker 1: The next morning, Carla called to telegram she'd tested positive.
Speaker 1: He soon noticed he was also getting sick, lousy, like
Speaker 1: a cold, heavy in the chest. He later told police
Speaker 1: it seemed to be getting worse, and the next week
Speaker 1: an ambulance brought him back to the hospital. He had
Speaker 1: the virus too. The next day he was moved into
Speaker 1: the same room as Carla, who was coughing terribly. He
Speaker 1: said it was shocking. Soon she was in the intensive
Speaker 1: care unit where she could be given more oxygen. Soon
Speaker 1: she was in the intensive care unit where she could
Speaker 1: get more oxygen. Graham moved with her, taking a bed
Speaker 1: a few feet away. In the early hours of March
Speaker 1: twenty nine, he stopped hearing the sound of her breathing.
Speaker 1: He got up and took her hand to feel for
Speaker 1: a pulse. I could tell you then that she had
Speaker 1: passed away, he said. He stayed with her for a while,
Speaker 1: then went back to his own bed, unsure what to
Speaker 1: do next. I had just watched my wife die and
Speaker 1: there was nothing I could do. In Hobart Keel, the
Speaker 1: Tasmanian retiree, had also tested positive at home one day,
Speaker 1: he says, I got up, had breakfast and couldn't lift
Speaker 1: my head off the table. An ambulance brought him to
Speaker 1: the hospital, where doctor sent him to the I c
Speaker 1: U and put him on a ventilator. He has only
Speaker 1: vague memories of what followed, a period of heavy sedation
Speaker 1: and lurid dreams. At one point he woke up with
Speaker 1: daughters and nurses gathered around his bed. I remember the
Speaker 1: fear around me, just the sheer panic, Keel says. I
Speaker 1: was almost crying, asking am I going to be all right?
Speaker 1: And I could tell from the answers that I wasn't.
Speaker 1: Keel's wife, Rosie, and their daughter came to see him
Speaker 1: for what they feared would be the last time, donning gowns, masks, goals,
Speaker 1: and gloves to enter the room. Their son was reluctant
Speaker 1: to come. He didn't want his final memory of his father,
Speaker 1: an athletic man who had competed nine times in the
Speaker 1: notoriously difficult Sydney to Hobart's Sailing race, to be of
Speaker 1: him hooked up to a ventilator, sensors and I V drips.
Speaker 1: Keel spent eleven days that way before finally recovering months later,
Speaker 1: he still isn't feeling like himself. He's often short of breath,
Speaker 1: has trouble sleeping, and struggles with severe pain in his hands.
Speaker 1: I reckon. Out of the six that we went with
Speaker 1: on the cruise, Keiel says, I was the fittest and
Speaker 1: yet look at how I came out. Only one group
Speaker 1: aboard the Ruby was treated almost from the start as
Speaker 1: potential carriers of the virus. It's one thousand plus crew members,
Speaker 1: many from countries like Indonesia and the Philippines, weren't allowed
Speaker 1: to disembark in Sydney. There are thousands of people potentially
Speaker 1: in cruise ships off our coasts that aren't members of
Speaker 1: our state, and if we take them in then that
Speaker 1: could well flood our system, said Fuller, the new South
Speaker 1: Wales Police Force Commissioner. It's time to go to your
Speaker 1: port of origin. But that directive was all but meaningless
Speaker 1: for a company like Carnival, a tangle of financial engineering
Speaker 1: that's incorporated in Panama in the UK, operates out of
Speaker 1: Miami and flags its ships in tax havens such as Bermuda,
Speaker 1: the Ruby's nominal home port. For the moment, those on
Speaker 1: board would remain while the company figured out where it
Speaker 1: could sail With the passengers gone, the crew became in
Speaker 1: effect their own guests. On March nineteenth, a sail away
Speaker 1: party took place around one of the pools, with the
Speaker 1: Sydney Skyline towering above. There was a dance performance and
Speaker 1: an m C promised a great cruise ahead. It has
Speaker 1: been a challenging time, but you have done an amazing job,
Speaker 1: he said. It seemed to some, at least as if
Speaker 1: it were the beginning of a well deserved break. We
Speaker 1: thought it was a holiday from then on, says Byron Sodani,
Speaker 1: an Italian fitness trainer who had been working on the
Speaker 1: ship since January. A cruise without passengers, it was really exciting,
Speaker 1: but it was also a cruise without a destination. The
Speaker 1: Ruby soon left the harbor to wait off shore, where
Speaker 1: its medical staff attended to an increasing number of personnel
Speaker 1: with respiratory symptoms. A Filipino crewmen who asked not to
Speaker 1: be identified because he feared consequences for speaking to the media,
Speaker 1: recalls that more and more of his colleagues were being
Speaker 1: transferred from their cramped shared accommodations to passenger cabins where
Speaker 1: they could more easily isolate. There were several dozen on
Speaker 1: the first day of moving, then hundreds more over the
Speaker 1: next couple of days. It was very scary because you
Speaker 1: don't know what's going on. The crewmen says only the
Speaker 1: sickest staff were permitted to return to Sydney for treatment.
Speaker 1: With opposition politicians and trade unions raising the alarm about
Speaker 1: conditions on the Ruby, Australian officials in early April allowed
Speaker 1: it to dock not at Circular Quay, where it would
Speaker 1: be in full view of much of Sydney, but at
Speaker 1: Port Kembla and out of the way industrial harbor. There
Speaker 1: the ship became aim, as Paul Holmes, a British pianist
Speaker 1: on board, put it in a Facebook video, a five
Speaker 1: star floating prison. Almost everyone was confined to quarters, permitted
Speaker 1: to open the door only to accept food or attend
Speaker 1: to medical needs. Police officers and soldiers guarded the pier.
Speaker 1: One night, detectives came aboard in head to toe hasmat
Speaker 1: gear to seize the vessels black box style data recorder
Speaker 1: and other evidence. The state government was desperate to resolve
Speaker 1: the situation. I've drawn a line in the sand and
Speaker 1: i want this ship gone fuller told the Australian, but
Speaker 1: sending it back to sea full of COVID nineteen patients
Speaker 1: would have been unconscionable. By mid April, more than ten
Speaker 1: percent of the crew had tested positive. It took until
Speaker 1: late in the month to arrive at a solution. Everyone
Speaker 1: on board was tested, with a substantial number of those
Speaker 1: who samples came back negative permitted to depart by air,
Speaker 1: so Donni disembarked within hours of being cleared for departure.
Speaker 1: He was taken to the Sheraton in central Sydney, where
Speaker 1: he remained until flying to Doha and then on to Rome.
Speaker 1: Staff from poor countries had a more difficult time, Despite
Speaker 1: protests by sympathetic groups who argued that Australia should help
Speaker 1: them get home, About five hundred crew, largely from developing
Speaker 1: nations with limited ability to organize repatriation efforts, stayed on
Speaker 1: the Ruby to sail to Manila, the capital of one
Speaker 1: of the few countries admitting cruise ships to their waters.
Speaker 1: The Filipino crewmen was relatively fortunate, permitted to disembark on
Speaker 1: April twenty three so he could take a charter flight
Speaker 1: from Sydney. Other staff endured a two week boat trip
Speaker 1: to the Philippines, then waited weeks for permission to come ashore.
Speaker 1: Even so, the crewmen had to spend more than three
Speaker 1: weeks quarantined in a Manila hotel before he was allowed
Speaker 1: to begin the eighteen hour ferry journey to his home province.
Speaker 1: He was quarantined for a further two weeks there. He
Speaker 1: was finally free on June fourth, seventy seven days after
Speaker 1: the cruise's guests disembarked. The Ruby Princess is now anchored
Speaker 1: off the coast of Malaysia. It's not yet clear whether
Speaker 1: anyone will be held to account for what happened on board.
Speaker 1: In all, at least six hundred and sixty three guests
Speaker 1: and crew are known to have been infected with coronavirus.
Speaker 1: The twenty eight people who died twenty in Australia and
Speaker 1: eight in the US, represent a toll twice as large
Speaker 1: as that from the Diamond Princess, the vessel that recorded
Speaker 1: the next highest number of fatalities. Barring stupendous negligence on
Speaker 1: some future voyage, the Ruby is likely when the history
Speaker 1: of the pandemic is written, to retain the distinction of
Speaker 1: having incubated its deadliest marine outbreak. The New South Wales
Speaker 1: Police Force is still engaged in a lengthy investigation, while
Speaker 1: lawsuits in Australia and California are in their early stages.
Speaker 1: The public inquiry, led by a prominent Sydney lawyer, published
Speaker 1: its report on August fourteenth, finding that Carnival and the
Speaker 1: Ruby's medical staff had generally complied with public health requirements.
Speaker 1: It did say that von Wattsdorf would have made sure
Speaker 1: public health officials were aware of how many sick passengers
Speaker 1: had arrived after she sent her initial disease log, an
Speaker 1: oversight that, if avoided, might have changed outcomes. Whether the
Speaker 1: company should have been operating ships at all given what
Speaker 1: was already known about the virus and cruises wasn't part
Speaker 1: of the inquiry's brief. The report's sharpest criticism was reserved
Speaker 1: for the process the government used to clear the Ruby
Speaker 1: to doc which it said was marked by serious efforts.
Speaker 1: It called the decision to deem the vessel low risk
Speaker 1: as inexplicable as it is unjustifiable. Wrestler, the State epidemiologist,
Speaker 1: had broken down in tears while testifying, we did what
Speaker 1: we could. She said, her voice unsteady if we could
Speaker 1: do it again, it would be very different. After the
Speaker 1: report's release, Princess issued a statement expressing profound sorrow about
Speaker 1: the deaths. New South Wales Premier Gladys Berrajiclion said she
Speaker 1: wished to apologize unreservedly for mistakes by health personnel. Nowhere
Speaker 1: were the tragic consequences more apparent than in Northwest Tasmania,
Speaker 1: an economically struggling, largely rural corner of Australia's smallest state.
Speaker 1: The first sick passenger from the Ruby Princess arrived at
Speaker 1: the Northwest Regional Hospital in w r H in the
Speaker 1: town of Burney shortly after the vessel got back to Sydney.
Speaker 1: Another was admitted about a week later. By early April,
Speaker 1: an investigation by the state Health Authority found one or
Speaker 1: both of them had likely become the original source of
Speaker 1: a chain of COVID nineteen cases among nurses and other
Speaker 1: care personnel. Some continued to work while experiencing symptoms, and
Speaker 1: the virus spread rapidly among departments, infecting staff and patients alike.
Speaker 1: Unable to contain the outbreak any other way, on April twelfth,
Speaker 1: the Tasmanian government announced it would shut down the hospital,
Speaker 1: ordering employees and their families into an immediate fourteen day quarantine.
Speaker 1: Military doctors had to fly in to handle emergencies. In all,
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty eight people in the region were infected,
Speaker 1: ten of whom died. The outbreak was random in its cruelty.
Speaker 1: One couple, Bill and adrian Christ had lived in the
Speaker 1: northwestern part of the island for more than forty years.
Speaker 1: They'd met in Sydney when Adrianne was still a rebellious
Speaker 1: teenager hanging out in a red light district pub, and
Speaker 1: Bill was in the navy. The bar was the first
Speaker 1: watering hole he'd spotted after his ship docked one day.
Speaker 1: They were soon married and later moved to Olverstone, a
Speaker 1: mid sized town about a half hour's drive from Bernie.
Speaker 1: They raised three daughters in a house with a view
Speaker 1: out to sea. Bill worked on a tugboat and at
Speaker 1: the end of the day Adrianne could tell when he'd
Speaker 1: be home by how far out he was. He had
Speaker 1: emphyzyma and needed an oxygen tank to breathe comfortably. Other
Speaker 1: than that he was in pretty good nick. He was
Speaker 1: still enjoying life. Adrianne says, we were enjoying our old age.
Speaker 1: In early April, Bill told Adrianne he wasn't feeling well
Speaker 1: and not to go get checked out. She drove, and
Speaker 1: as they left home, she asked Bill whether he wanted
Speaker 1: to go left to Bernie and the n w R
Speaker 1: H or right to a hospital in another town. He
Speaker 1: preferred the Bernie Road, a scenic route that traces the
Speaker 1: edge of the Bass straight, so that's the way we went,
Speaker 1: Adrianne says. The hospital admitted Bill right away. At first,
Speaker 1: there were no obvious virus precautions, she recalls, but when
Speaker 1: he took a turn for the worse a few days later,
Speaker 1: she was told she'd have to go. I said no,
Speaker 1: I stay, and then they put me in one of
Speaker 1: those yellow gowns, gloves, shoe covers, big goggles over my spectacles.
Speaker 1: At one point, she says, I bent down to kiss him,
Speaker 1: and a nurse came over and just about put her
Speaker 1: hand in front of my face. Still, Adrianne refused to leave.
Speaker 1: We'd made wedding vows and we believed in what we said,
Speaker 1: so when they wanted to shuffle me out, I said, no,
Speaker 1: I can't go. If he's dying, I have to stay.
Speaker 1: Bill died on April tenth, the day after the couple's
Speaker 1: fifty seventh wedding anniversary. Adrianne was told only near the
Speaker 1: end that he'd been diagnosed with COVID nineteen, almost certainly
Speaker 1: acquired while he was in the hospital, second hand or
Speaker 1: third hand from the Ruby Princess, as she now knows.
Speaker 1: At first, she found it hard to understand how the
Speaker 1: virus could have made it all the way to her
Speaker 1: isolated corner of the world. I thought that comes from
Speaker 1: cruise ships, and we haven't even been near a cruise
Speaker 1: ship with Jason Scott. And that's Matt Campbell's feature story
Speaker 1: in Bloomberg Business Week this week about Carnival's Ruby Princess,
Speaker 1: the ship docking, and then the spread of COVID that
Speaker 1: happened after it. Be sure to check out that story
Speaker 1: and so much more, including our cover story, and that
Speaker 1: is about Facebook and its relationship with President Trump. I'm
Speaker 1: Carol Masser and I'm Jason Kelly. Check us out every
Speaker 1: day on the radio Bloomberg Business Week starting at two
Speaker 1: pm Wall Street Time, and of course, subscribe to our
Speaker 1: podcast feed This is Bloomberg. Join us for the Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Equality Summit on September. Speakers include Alicia Garza, LLL cool J,
Speaker 1: doctor Anthony Fauci, Alissa Milano, David Rubinstein, Sonny Houstin, and
Speaker 1: Minnie More. This event is proudly sponsored by P and G, TPG,
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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Live dot com. Slash Equality, Slash Radio