Teenager falls overboard from Carnival cruise ship originating in New Orleans

http://www.nola.com
by The Times-Picayune
Monday May 25, 2009, 11:35 AM
A cruise ship headed to Key West from New Orleans lost a passenger Sunday evening when an 18-year-old man fell overboard, the Coast Guard said. The call came in at 9:45 p.m., said Petty Officer Nick Ameen, a Coast Guard spokesman in Miami. A teenager, likely a member of a high school group celebrating graduation, had fallen into the water. Now, almost 14 hours later, the man is still missing, Ameen said. Helicopters, a C-130 Hercules and the Coast Guard Cutter Nantucket are still scouring the ocean about 150 miles off the Florida coast from Tampa Bay. The cruise ship, the Carnival Fantasy, circled the area until 2:30 a.m., before proceeding on to Key West, Ameen said. Ameen said he didn't have any identification for the teenager, but WWL-TV is reporting his name is Bruce O'Krepki of Hammond, a recent graduate St. Thomas Aquinas High School.

Crews search Gulf for missing teen
http://www.wafb.com

Increasinag Number of Cases of Swine Flu on Cruise Ships

Swine flu threat becoming more serious: Roxon
ABC Online - ‎1 hour ago‎
Speaking to Channel Nine, Ms Roxon also defended authorities who quarantined a cruise ship in Sydney because of a swine flu scare yesterday. ...
Swine Flu Cases Surge Above 10000
Voice of America - ‎May 20, 2009‎
Health authorities say the 52-year-old Australian man arrived in Taipei on Monday, after working as a doctor on a cruise ship in the northeastern US state ...
Second Cruise Ship Reports Possible Swine Flu Among Crew
CruiseCritic.co.uk - ‎May 13, 2009‎
At this point, it is unknown whether the H1N1 virus is present. However, when the ship arrived in Barbados this morning, information about the illness and ...
Fears swine flu has spread in South Australian schools
Adelaidenow - ‎3 hours ago‎
ALMOST 3000 passengers on a cruise ship from Hawaii were held up for five hours in Sydney for tests after several showed flu symptoms. ...
Doctors on alert
Tasmania Mercury - ‎5 hours ago‎
Also yesterday the P&O cruise ship Dawn Princess spent five hours in quarantine in Sydney after four of its 3000 passengers and crew were tested for the ...
Thousands held in harbour quarantine
The Age - ‎14 hours ago‎
NEARLY 3000 passengers and crew were quarantined on a cruise ship in Sydney Harbour yesterday due to a swine flu scare, before being allowed ashore but ...
Swine Flu Diagnosed In Cruise Ship Crew Member SmartAboutHealthBoston (SmartAboutHealth) - It is being reported that a crew member working aboard the Serenade of the Seas cruise ship has been diagnosed with swine flu.
The ship was cruising through the waters of Alaska at the time of the diagnosis, making this case the first to be reported in the state.

Crew member aboard a cruise ship in Alaska waters is recovering from what health officials suspect is swine flu

seattletimes.nwsource.com

Swine flu suspected in crew member on cruise ship

By MARY PEMBERTON
Associated Press Writer
ANCHORAGE, Alaska —
A crew member aboard a cruise ship in Alaska waters is recovering from what health officials suspect is swine flu.
The female crew member of the Serenade of the Seas, a Royal Caribbean ship, became ill May 2 while sailing from San Francisco northward. The woman was isolated two days later and was treated with antiviral medication, Dr. Jay Butler, Alaska's chief medical officer, said Sunday.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notified Alaska health officials over the weekend that there was a probable case of swine flu aboard the ship.
Testing was performed at the Washington State Public Health Laboratory and forwarded to the CDC. The CDC is in the process of validating the results, which were expected Monday.
In the meantime, the state conducted its own testing on a sample taken in Ketchikan when the ship docked there. That sample was sent Friday to the new virology lab at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and came back negative on Saturday.
Those results were not a surprise, Butler said, because the woman had already been three days on Tamiflu, an anti-viral medication effective against swine flu, and for several days had no fever.
The swine flu has been blamed for 53 deaths worldwide, including 48 in Mexico, three in the U.S., one in Canada and one in Costa Rica.
Confirmed cases, according to the World Health Organization and CDC are more than 4,500 in 29 countries, including at least 1,626 in Mexico, at least 2,532 in the United States and 280 in Canada.
On April 18, before embarking for Alaska, the Serenade of the Seas departed San Juan, Puerto Rico. During the 14-night Panama Canal voyage it visited Huatulco and Acapulco, Mexico.
On May 2, the ship departed San Francisco for a 14-night voyage to southeast Alaska and Canada.
No other cases of suspected swine flu have been diagnosed aboard the ship.
Butler said the ship's medical staff followed strict isolation procedures to prevent the spread of the illness.

The pirates would have boarded had some passengers not fought them off with chairs being thrown overboard as they were clambering up the side

Kiwi slams security in pirate attack.
/tvnz.co.nz
One of the New Zealander passengers on board a cruise ship attacked by pirates says the danger of the situation has been down played to the media by the ship's captain.
The MSC Melody was over 900 kilometres off the Somali coast last Saturday, with 62 New Zealanders on board, when it was attacked.
Passenger Lorraine Adams told her mother, Barbara Newton from Nelson, in an email there was a lot to be disclosed when the ship docked as "really and truly, security weren't expecting this", the Sunday Star Times reports.
"The pirates would have boarded had some passengers not fought them off with chairs being thrown overboard as they were clambering up the side but then security of ours started the gunfire and, of course, pirates from their boat were letting us have it as well," she emailed.
"Captain said he took 4000 phone calls from CNN, NBC, BBC and of course every possible radio and TV station from around the world but everyone feels he has covered his own backside re security on that night."
The ship's captain, Ciro Pinto, said afterwards the attack had felt like "war".
One passenger and one crew member were injured by broken glass from windows shattered by gunfire, but the other 990 passengers were not injured. MSC Cruises chief executive Pier Francesco Vago said the ship's radar did not pick up the speed boat used by the pirates and it had arrived unexpectedly.
When bullets were fired the captain realised they were under attack and crew herded passengers into their cabins and got them to switch their lights off, he told Radio New Zealand last week.
He played down reports of security staff on the ship having had a shootout with the pirates.
The captain had zig-zagged the ship, the crew had sprayed the pirates with hoses and fired two warning shots in the air and the pirates had given up, Vago said.
A Spanish warship had intercepted a skiff carrying nine suspected Somali pirates believed to have attacked an Italian cruise ship