Major cruise lines are keeping a close eye on the progress of Freewinds, a cruise ship owned by the Church of Scientology, which reached its home port on the southern Caribbean island of Curaçao on Saturday with measles aboard, after having been quarantined elsewhere.
Freewinds, carrying about 300 Scientologists and crew, was a few days previously placed in quarantine in Castries, St Lucia, over the highly infectious disease, which is believed to have been caught elsewhere and brought aboard by a female crew member.
Authorities in Curaçao boarded the ship on Saturday to start vaccinating people to prevent a measles outbreak, NBC News reported. Passengers and crew who can prove they have been already vaccinated or have had measles in the past were expected to be allowed off the ship yesterday.
Curaçao has been free of local transmission of measles since 1990. St Lucia’s Ministry of Health and Wellness said it had provided 100 doses of measles vaccine to the ship.
The Church of Scientology explains on its website that for a Scientologist, boarding Freewinds is “the pinnacle of a deeply spiritual journey”.
The site continues: “The Sea Organization Motor Vessel Freewinds is entirely staffed by members of the Sea Organization. Utilizing the training materials developed by L. Ron Hubbard in the early days of the Sea Organization, the Freewinds has the best safety and service record of any ship in the Caribbean.”
Above: Freewinds photographed in 2014. The ship was reportedly built in Finland in 1968, originally as a car ferry in Europe.
Cruise lines are concerned because measles is extremely contagious. An unvaccinated person can catch the disease simply by visiting the same room that an infected person has been in – even if the infected person left the room two hours earlier.
Measles is vastly more infectious than norovirus, which causes nasty gastric symptoms and breaks out periodically on cruise ships, in schools, prisons and in other places where people congregate. One way of combatting measles on ships is to require passengers to prove they have either had measles in the past (thus having acquired immunity to it) or been vaccinated against it.
Measles was largely defeated in the 20th century, being declared eliminated (absence of continuous disease transmission for greater than 12 months) from the United States in 2000, thanks to a highly effective vaccination program.
The answer. Vaccination
Then came the 21st century and social media. Measles has now returned – being spread by social media, in a sense. Vaccination rates have dropped steadily in the US because of nonsensical tales and hoaxes spreading on social media about vaccines causing autism, or other problems, in children.
The World Health Organisation has declared the anti-vaccine movement to be one of the top global health threats for 2019.
Reuters says 318 passengers and crew are believed to be aboard Freewinds.
One in 10 people catching measles requires hospital treatment. The most serious cases can result in damage to the lungs, swelling of the brain, deafness or blindness. Measles is infectious before the rash appears and is one of the most infectious airborne diseases.
Measles
Measles typically begins with:
- high fever,
- cough,
- runny nose (coryza), and
- red, watery eyes (conjunctivitis).
Below: Nautical signal flag ‘Lima’, also called the ‘Yellow Jack’ when flown in harbour, means ‘ship is under quarantine’.
Two or three days after symptoms begin, tiny white spots (Koplik spots) may appear inside the mouth. A day or two after that, an intensely itchy rash breaks out. It usually begins as flat red spots that appear on the face at the hairline and spread downward to the neck, torso, arms, legs, and feet.
Authorities say the only way to prevent measles is to be fully vaccinated. Anyone born before 1969 is almost certain to be immune to the disease, even without having had the vaccine, as children used to catch measles routinely in the days before a vaccine was available. Most of us survived.
Written by Peter Needham
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