JAKARTA – The Maritime and Port Authority (MPA) of Singapore said that the Costa Fortuna cruise vessel will dock at the city-state on March 10.
The ship, which is carrying over 2,000 passengers, including 64 Italians, was refused entry to Phuket in Thailand and Penang in Malaysia over concerns about coronavirus, as the number of cases in Italy surged.
The MPA and the Singapore Tourism Board said that the ship’s passengers, who departed Singapore on March 3, could disembark as they had “completed pre-embarkation checks based on prevailing policies for travel history and temperature screening as required by the cruise line and the terminal operator prior to boarding.”
Passengers will be checked again by a doctor on board and will be screened as they get off the boat in Singapore on Tuesday, Singaporean authorities said.
“We are going to make the disembarkation on March 10. They [the ship’s passengers] have received all the information,” a spokeswoman for Genoa-based Costa Crociere said on Monday morning, prior to the Singaporean confirmation. A subsequent Costa Fortuna cruise, scheduled to depart Singapore later on Tuesday, has been cancelled.
GPS tracking data showed the Costa Fortuna as having sailed south through the Strait of Malacca, one of the world’s busiest trade routes, to the Strait of Singapore. By Monday morning the ship had exited Singaporean waters and was heading east in the direction of Malaysian and international waters in the South China Sea.
