The Ovation of the Seas, with confirmed Covid-19 on board, docked in Picton on Wednesday. Photo: STUFF / Anthony Phelps
Cruise passengers who have disembarked from a liner carrying people infected with Covid-19 in Marlborough are arriving in the small town with coughs and cold symptoms, a pharmacist there has confirmed.
Picton, population 4790, effectively doubled in size on Wednesday as cruise ship Ovation of the Seas docked in the Marlborough Sounds town carrying 4500 crew and passengers, including 129 passengers and two crew members who have Covid-19.
The confirmed cases aboard are isolating and when the ship was in Wellington on Tuesday, Capital, Coast, Hutt Valley and Wairarapa Medical Officer of Health Dr Jill McKenzie was confident the situation was being well handled by the cruise company.
Te Whatu Ora, which replaced district health boards and is responsible for public health units, could not immediately provide cases numbers for the vessel on Wednesday.
The Marlborough town of Picton is busy on Wednesday with a cruise ship, with thousands of passengers, docked in town. Photo: STUFF / Anthony Phelps
The New Zealand Cruise Association lists two other cruise ships in New Zealand: The Celebrity Escape with 2850 guests, in Dunedin at 9am on Wednesday; and the Grand Princess, which was due in Tauranga with 2606 guests, at 9.30am.
Picton pharmacist Graeme Smith said there had been people from the ship coming in with cough and cold symptoms "and I know that Covid is on that ship".
"As a health facility people are supposed to wear a mask coming in. We have free masks on the counter and a sign but people are ignoring it.
"There is so many people you can't control it. It's already mandatory according to government rules. I don't know what the cruise industry is doing about it."
He is the pharmacy's only pharmacist, meaning that if he caught the virus the outlet would be without one.
"I am over 65 I have a heart condition that puts me in risk. So it's good for the town and for the businesses who struggled for the last two years but there are rules people should respect."
Picton pharmacist Graeme Smith was concerned about the lack of people wearing masks in the Marlborough town. Photo: STUFF / Anthony Phelps
Covid-19 Modelling Aotearoa co-lead Dr Emily Harvey has run the numbers to show any large cruise ship almost certainly has Covid cases.
"We can estimate that on a plane with 300 passengers, with a background prevalence of 1 percent, the chance that someone on your plane is infected is 78 percent," she said.
"Now thinking about cruise ships, which are larger, we would estimate that on a cruise ship of 2000 people, with background prevalence of 1 percent the probability that at least one of them is infected at the start of the trip approaches 100 percent."
Ovation of the Seas passenger Michelle Thurgar: "You could catch it easier in Sydney." Photo: STUFF / Morgane Solignac
In Picton, Ovation of the Seas passenger Michelle Thurgar, from Sydney, said with 4500 people on the ship, the number of cases was small.
"You don't see it at all. You could catch it easier in Sydney than you would on a ship," she said.
"They provide masks, there are plenty of people cleaning. It is very safe ... I believe before you get off in ports you should have to give a negative test, but it would probably cost them too much."
This story originally appeared on Stuff