UPDATE: Princess Cruises now says 66 passengers and 17 crew members have fallen ill, for a total of 83 sick people. 

That’s according to this report on The Global Dispatch, citing the company’s media relations manager.

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If you happen to be reading this while aboard the Crown Princess right now, please take the best advice we’ve gleaned from unfortunately frequent incidents: Wash your hands. Then wash them again, because there are about three dozen people sick with the Norovirus on your ship and these situations tend to only get worse.

While the specter of the Poop Cruise continues to loom over the cruise ship industry, thus far it doesn’t sound like things have gotten too far out of hand on the Crown Princess, with 37 of the more than 3,000 passengers on board falling ill so far, reports NBC Bay Area News.

The ship has been journeying along the West Coast, with a start and end of the itinerary in Los Angeles. It’s recently docked in San Francisco, where the cruise line says none of the sick passengers left the ship. Its next port of call is Santa Barbara.

Princess Cruises says the staff has enhanced the sanitation of surfaces like railings, door handles and elevator buttons and confining sick passengers to their cabins until they’re no longer contagious. Because the thing about Norovirus is, it’s highly contagious. Especially in places where thousands of people are all stuck together for days on end.

“We believe the cause to be the common virus called Norovirus, which is extremely contagious and easily transmitted from person-to-person,” says Princess, adding that the Centers for Disease Control is on the case as well.

“At the first sign of an increase in the numbers of passengers reporting to the medical center with gastrointestinal illness, we immediately initiated additional enhanced sanitation procedures to interrupt the person-to-person spread of this virus.”

Norovirus Sickens Crown Princess Cruise Ship Passengers [NBC Bay Area]

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