Cruise ship with H1N1 outbreak heads to Aruba

Madrid/Beijing: A Spanish cruise ship hit by a small outbreak of swine flu was headed yesterday for the Caribbean island of Aruba, where more than 400 passengers will disembark, the vessel's Spanish owner said.

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A Venezuelan state health official, Jorge Alchaer, initially said the passengers and crew would be held in quarantine aboard the Ocean Dream off Venezuela's Isla Margarita, but he confirmed yesterday that the vessel was headed to Aruba.

The ship was originally carrying 759 passengers and 400 crew members for a planned nine-day tour that began on June 12. But 342 Venezuelan passengers got off in Isla Margarita on Wednesday because that was their final destination anyway, said an official with Spanish tour operator Pullmantur, which owns the ship.

Three crew members have tested positive for swine flu and 11 others have flu symptoms but no passengers have fallen ill, Pullmantur says.

The ship was denied permission to dock in Grenada and Barbados on Wednesday. At that point, the company had not yet received confirmation of the positive cases but warned the authorities in those two countries that some crew members were sick, the company says.

The ship was scheduled to arrive yesterday in Aruba, where the cruise originally began.

Passengers have apparently complained they are not getting enough information on the outbreak.

"We are out on the water, with people who do not want to tell us anything. This is not a quarantine, it is a kidnapping," passenger Mario Infantini told the newspaper El Pais.

But the company official said the ship's crew had provided travellers with all information it had as it became available.

Venezuela's state news agency, Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias, said the passengers included 198 Spaniards, 151 Colombians, 11 Argentines, 11 Peruvians and seven US citizens.

There were also five passengers from the Netherlands, four each from Brazil, Chile and Panama, three from Uruguay, two each from Russia, Romania, France and one each from Belgium, Ireland and Italy.

Passengers will receive a partial refund for not having made the planned port calls in Grenada and Barbados, the company official said.

Meanwhile, dozens of American high school students quarantined in a central Chinese city after some of their classmates were diagnosed with swine flu have been cleared for release, an employee of the city's swine flu command centre said.

Thirty-five students and teachers quarantined at the Ruihao Hotel in Yichang city were to go to Shanghai later yesterday, said the employee, who would only give his surname, Chen.

Seven others in the group from the private Pacific Ridge School in Carlsbad, California, tested positive for swine flu and were hospitalised in stable condition.