Expert says officials need to get passengers off coronavirus-infected cruise ship quickly

San Francisco.
(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Thousands of passengers are stuck on a cruise ship off the coast of San Francisco because of a number of coronavirus cases on board. California authorities are working with federal officials to decide where to dock the Grand Princess cruise ship Saturday, but Don Milton, an epidemiologist at the University of Maryland, says the best thing would be to get everybody to disembark as quickly as possible.

Milton said cruise ships make people particularly vulnerable to infectious diseases. "They're not designed as quarantine facilities, to put it mildly," he told The Associated Press. "You're going to amplify the infection by keeping people on the boat."

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.