Popular Science13%
No, cruise ships aren't floating petri dishes 33%
By Clarissa Brincat35%
7/24/2026, 12:54:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 30 faulty reasoning types, including Indoctrination, Availability Heuristic, and Negativity Bias, with Appeal to Authority as the most egregious example at 14.1% saturation with 159 hits. Analysis detected 1,488 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,126 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 41.7% and a BS Rank of 33% (14,211 of 21,187 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 67.10% of the article peer group.
A medical team in head-to-toe hazmat suits boarding a cruise ship was one of the many harrowing images from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Earlier this year, similar images hit our screens as we learned about a hantavirus outbreak on MV Hondius.
It felt like a dreadful deja vu.
Such news fuels concerns that cruise ships are “floating petri dishes.”
But the cruise industry maintains that cruising is “one of the safest vacation options in the world.”
Where does the truth lie?
“I think the answer is somewhere in the middle,” says Dr.
William Schaffner, an infectious diseases professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Dr.
David O.
Freedman, professor emeritus of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who specializes in travel medicine, echoes that middle ground, noting that risks do exist, but that “people shouldn’t be frightened.”
Higher risk compared to other forms of travel
On cruise ships, there is a real risk of getting sick because of the unique environment with large numbers of people in close proximity for extended periods, Schaffner explains.
“We have many hundreds of people, both the passengers and the crew, close together, indoors principally, for long periods of time,” he says.
“Those are environments where highly contagious infectious agents can spread.”
Although no study has directly compared disease transmission on cruise ships and other forms of mass transit, such as planes, there’s reason to believe that disease transmission is higher aboard cruise ships.
“Risk depends on duration of exposure,” explains Freedman.
“Your exposure risk is going to be 10 times higher on a 10 hour ride than on a one hour ride,” he reasons.
On a cruise ship—where journeys typically last days to weeks, and sometimes months—your exposure risk is much higher than an hours-long plane journey.
What you’re likely—and unlikely—to catch on a cruise
Of the illnesses that are reported to the ship’s medical team, roughly a third are respiratory infections like the flu, says Freedman.
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a common cause of coughs and colds, also spreads among cruise ship passengers and crew members.
Why you shouldn’t worry about hantavirus
Hantavirus, meanwhile, is not something a typical cruisegoer needs to worry about, Freedman and Schaffner agree.
The recent event—caused by Andes virus, a strain that produces a severe respiratory illness—was, in Freedman's words, “a fluke, an anomaly.”
The cruise ship MV Hondius sparked global alarm after a deadly outbreak of hantavirus docked in Rotterdam harbour on May 18, 2026.
Image: Contributor / Getty Images /
The affected ship was a nature cruise, and the virus was introduced by a small number of passengers who were infected before boarding, during a trip to a rural area of South America.
The outbreak was serious for those involved, causing three deaths, and because Andes virus is the only hantavirus known to spread from person to person, it was able to pass to others onboard.
But a repeat is highly unlikely on a typical Caribbean or Mediterranean cruise, Schaffner says.
“I wouldn't be surprised if there was never another hantavirus outbreak on a ship,” Freedman adds.
Norovirus often spreads on cruises
The second main issue on cruise ships is gastrointestinal illness, and, within that category, norovirus is the main problem.
“We know that on average there's about one outbreak per month, so about 12 norovirus outbreaks per year, but that's only on ships that call at U.S. ports,” says Freedman.
Norovirus is such a problem that it’s often nicknamed “the cruise ship virus,” Schaffner notes.
Unfortunately, norovirus is very contagious.
It spreads very easily and quickly through contaminated food, water, and surfaces, and infected people remain contagious even days after they start feeling better.
A misunderstanding about hand sanitizers makes the problem worse, Freedman notes.
“Hand sanitizers are alcohol-based.
Alcohol does not kill norovirus—it has no effect,” says Freedman.
Hand washing with soap and water is what gets rid of norovirus.
Alcohol-based hand sanitizers work by destroying the fatty outer envelope of some viruses so they can’t infect cells, but norovirus doesn’t have this envelope, so you need to wash with soap and water to physically remove it from your hands.
Aside from norovirus, other gastrointestinal problems, such as food contamination with bacteria like Salmonella, are “pretty uncommon,” says Freedman.
“Most of the ships have very, very high sanitary standards [and] it has to be a real accident or exceptional for you to get contaminated food or water on board the ship.”
Experts put risk in perspective
Freedman notes that there isn’t good data on the exact risk of catching a respiratory illness on a cruise ship.
Available figures only reflect cases severe enough to reach the ship’s medical team.
Many mild cases go unreported, Freedman says.
The good news is that, barring a pandemic like COVID—a highly infectious disease to which no one had immunity—most respiratory illnesses on cruise ships are mild, Freedman says.
The caveat is that there is an increased risk of respiratory complications in older individuals and those with compromised immune systems.
“On a cruise ship, there's a lot of people over 65,” Freedman notes, “so they probably need to be more cautious."
When it comes to gastrointestinal illness, the stats are heartening.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), between 2006 and 2019, the rate of gastrointestinal illness among passengers on three to 21-day voyages dropped by half, from 32.5 to 16.9 cases per 100,000 travel days.
This may be thanks to cruise lines having paid “a great deal of attention” to prevention, says Schaffner.
This involves adding handwashing stations, doing regular disinfection of high‑touch surfaces, and prioritizing passenger education about the importance of hand hygiene and not boarding when ill.
How to avoid getting sick on a cruise ship
If you’re planning to take a cruise, the best thing you can do to avoid catching norovirus is to wash your hands often with soap and water, both experts agree.
To avoid serious respiratory illness onboard a cruise ship, the CDC recommends that all passengers and crew are up to date with all routine vaccines, including vaccines for COVID-19, influenza, and measles.
If you are over 65, pregnant, or immunocompromised, your doctor may suggest antiviral medications.
And if you're feeling a little ill, rebook, says Schaffner.
This is both a public health responsibility—you avoid spreading infection to others—and also a practical issue, Schaffner says.
“You don't want to go on a cruise and within 24 or 48 hours find yourself in the bathroom all the time.”
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