Cruise Ship Infection Control

The headlines come round with a depressing and monotonous regularity. Cancelled voyages, destroyed holidays, ships confined to port or not allowed into port, passengers confined to cabins. There is an ever increasing list of nasty, and some potentially fatal, infections that proliferate with ease in the confines of passenger carrying vessels. Cruise ship infection control seems forever topical. Vomiting bug, novovirus, and now coronavirus (Covid-19) seem to be able to easily get a foot hold in the densely populated, mixed ethnicity, environment of cruise ships. These infections have various routes for transmission from person to person and one route for the respiratory type infections is through the air in the form of the virus contained in airborne droplets. Cruise ship infection control has several dimensions and it seems that the one dimension is largely overlooked. The ventilation systems in ships conform to various industry standards which although in some respects are unique to the marine application, are in other respects very similar to the standards for buildings on land. Here you will find information about temperature regulation, ventilation operation, air change rates amongst other details but nothing on the prevention of air borne infections. This is a pity because the networks of ducting that supply air to the occupied spaces would be an obvious conduit for the supply of infectious bio-aerosols from one part of the ship to the other. In the methodology for effective cruise ship infection control, this transmission route warrants serious consideration.

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