The declaration was at a minimum premature.
Only 20 people out of the 2,257 onboard were tested for the virus before disembarking, and that was because they had reported themselves to ship medical staff with various ailments.
The woman who twice tested positive after traveling on to Malaysia, an 83-year-old American, was not among those 20, Holland America said.
Health monitoring for the rest of the passengers was limited to a handful of temperature checks conducted with infrared thermometers, passengers said. In a statement, Holland America said that during one of those screenings, not a single person on board recorded an elevated temperature.
On Monday, an announcement broadcast to passengers remaining on the Westerdam warned that they should avoid the ship’s hot deck and return to their air-conditioned rooms to avoid falsely high temperature readings.
Some health experts have questioned the efficacy of infrared thermometers, also known as temperature guns, saying they measure the heat emanating from the surface of the body, rather than core body temperature.
Various environmental factors can distort thermometer gun reading, said Gary Strahan, who runs a small infrared device company in Texas.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/world/asia/coronavirus-westerdam-cambodia-hun-sen.html
Comments