On a Wednesday announcement, French public health and regional authorities confirmed that more than 1,700 passengers and crew members have been confined to a British cruise ship anchored off the coast of Bordeaux, after dozens of people on board developed symptoms of acute gastrointestinal infection. The lockdown order came quickly after the captain of the Ambition, operated by UK-based Ambassador Cruise Line, alerted local health officials to the outbreak Tuesday evening, just hours after the vessel arrived at the French port to end a leg of its 14-night voyage.
The Ambition had departed from Belfast and Liverpool earlier this month, with an itinerary that planned stops at ports across northern Spain and France’s Atlantic coastline. In a joint statement from regional prefect Étienne Guyot and the Nouvelle-Aquitaine regional health agency, officials confirmed that disembarkation has been fully suspended, and all interactions between the ship and the port of Bordeaux have been restricted. As of Wednesday morning, Ambassador Cruise Line reported that 48 passengers and one crew member were showing active gastrointestinal symptoms, while local authorities initially noted that roughly 50 people had developed symptoms matching acute digestive infection. All affected individuals have been placed in isolation in their cabins and treated by the ship’s on-board medical team, and a specialized medical assessment team from French health authorities was dispatched to the vessel to collect patient samples. Those samples are currently undergoing analysis at a local hospital in Bordeaux, with results expected to be released later Wednesday.
In a key clarification to ease public concern, French authorities explicitly ruled out any connection between this outbreak and a recent deadly hantavirus outbreak on a separate expedition vessel, the MV Hondius, that has put European and global health officials on high alert in recent weeks. That earlier outbreak, which occurred last month, has killed three passengers and resulted in nine confirmed and two suspected cases of hantavirus across four countries: the UK, France, Spain, and the United States.
Ambassador Cruise Line also separately confirmed that a 92-year-old male passenger passed away on the Ambition earlier this week, before the outbreak was declared. The company stressed that the deceased passenger did not show any symptoms of the current gastrointestinal infection, and his cause of death will remain undetermined until a full coroner’s investigation is completed.
All planned shore excursions in Bordeaux have been canceled as part of the containment order, and the cruise line has said it will issue full refunds to passengers affected by the canceled activities. The outbreak of gastrointestinal illness on the Ambition is the latest in a series of such events recorded on cruise ships in recent months. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which maintains a global monitoring program for infectious disease outbreaks on cruise ships calling at domestic and international ports, documented 23 separate gastrointestinal outbreaks on cruise vessels around the world in 2023 alone. The vast majority of these outbreaks were linked to norovirus, including one previously undocumented new strain of the highly contagious virus. Just last week, the CDC confirmed a norovirus outbreak on the Caribbean Princess cruise ship, which was carrying more than 3,100 passengers on a recent voyage that ended Monday. More than 140 passengers and 15 crew members contracted the illness during that trip, according to CDC data.
Founded in 2021, Ambassador Cruise Line is a British operator that focuses on offering cruise experiences for travelers over the age of 50. Associated Press reporter Jonathan Poet, based in Philadelphia, contributed reporting to this story.