STORY ARC

Coronavirus Case That Forced Cruise Back to Dock Wasn’t Actually Coronavirus

The 83-year-old man returned a positive test aboard Royal Caribbean’s Quantum of the Seas, but then he tested negative—twice.

On Wednesday, passengers on a cruise ship in Singapore got the grim message that someone on board had tested positive for the coronavirus and the vessel would have to return to dock a day early. That happened, thousands of passengers disembarked, and then it turned out that the supposedly sick passenger didn’t have COVID-19 after all. The 83-year-old man returned a positive test aboard Royal Caribbean’s Quantum of the Seas, but then he tested negative, and a retest of his first sample also came back negative, according to The Washington Post. The passengers were on a “cruise to nowhere,” a journey that has no stops in order to minimize the risk of any passengers catching the virus.