CDC issues ‘no-sail’ order for sick ship

? Armed with sanitizers and disinfectants, dozens of workers will be scrubbing the world’s largest cruise ship today, a day after it returned to the Port of Miami-Dade with more than a hundred sick passengers and crew members – again.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a rare “no-sail” recommendation to Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas. The Miami-based company agreed to comply, keeping the ship docked until Tuesday so it can be thoroughly decontaminated. The decision delays the next cruise two days.

The Freedom of the Seas returned to port Sunday morning with 97 passengers and 11 crew members who had suffered from a norovirus outbreak. Last Sunday, the same ship came back to Miami from a Caribbean cruise with about 380 recovering passengers and ship employees.

Another cruise ship docked in Port Everglades on Sunday with 119 cases of norovirus. That ship, Princess Cruises’ Sun Princess, was cleaned and it set sail again Sunday afternoon. The CDC did not recommend a no-sail delay for the 2,875-passenger ship.