Nearly 25 guests, crew sick in luxury cruise gastrointestinal outbreak

Nearly 25 people got sick in a gastrointestinal outbreak on a Regent Seven Seas Cruises sailing that ended Wednesday.

Among 666 guests on board its Seven Seas Explorer ship, 22 reported being ill, along with two crew members, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Their main symptoms were vomiting and diarrhea.

The health agency listed the causative agent as unknown.

The ship departed from Tokyo on April 26 for a cruise through Japan and Alaska before arriving in Vancouver, according to CruiseMapper. The cruise line consulted with the CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Program and isolated sick guests and crew, among other measures, the agency said.

Regent did not immediately respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment.

There have been 17 outbreaks of gastrointestinal illness on cruise ships that met the CDC’s threshold for public notification so far this year, most of which were caused by norovirus. There were 18 outbreaks in all of 2024, and 14 the previous year.

The CDC told USA TODAY in April that although “the number of recent cruise ship outbreaks has been higher than in years prior to the pandemic, we do not yet know if this represents a new trend.”

“However, CDC data show a newly dominant strain is currently associated with reported norovirus outbreaks on land,” the agency said in an emailed statement. “Ships typically follow the pattern of land-based outbreaks, which are higher this norovirus season.”

The illness is frequently associated with cruises, but those make up just 1% of all outbreaks reported. Dr. David J. Weber, the Charles Addison and Elizabeth Ann Sanders Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at the UNC School of Medicine, previously told USA TODAY that the vessels are conducive to the spread of norovirus since passengers and crew are confined to relatively small spaces and often eat together.

“So, most (outbreaks) are not occurring on cruise ships, but the cruise ships are a perfect setting for it,” Weber, who is also a professor of epidemiology at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, said in April.

Seven Seas Explorer wasn’t the only ship with illness on board this month. A number of passengers aboard Virgin Voyages’ Resilient Lady had stomach flu symptoms during a cruise from Greece to Croatia and Montenegro that ended May 11.

“Out of an abundance of caution, our medical team isolated these travelers and immediately enacted enhanced sanitization procedures, including additional cleaning of cabins and high-contact areas around the ship,” the cruise line said in an emailed statement. “We are working closely with health officials and their medical professionals.”

The number of impacted passengers and cause of illness were not immediately available.

Nathan Diller is a consumer travel reporter for USA TODAY based in Nashville. You can reach him at ndiller@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 20+ people sick in Regent Seven Seas cruise gastrointestinal outbreak