Outbreak Hits Guests and Crew on Luxury Cruise Ship
As Regent Seven Seas’ Seven Seas Explorer arrived in Vancouver, British Colombia, to begin a season in Alaska, some passengers on its repositioning journey across the Pacific Ocean were more relieved to be disembarking than expected.
Turns out that during the 750-passenger luxury vessel’s 18-night sailing from Tokyo to Vancouver, an outbreak occurred, affecting 22 of its 666 passengers and two members of its 545 crew.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) received word from the ship’s medical team on May 14, 2025, the day it pulled into port.
The ship departed from Tokyo on April 26, 2025, with passengers beginning to fall ill to symptoms of diarrhea and vomiting in what the CDC is calling an official gastrointestinal outbreak.
A gastrointestinal illness is defined by symptoms of three or more loose stools within a 24-hour period and vomiting, along with one or more additional symptoms that include muscle ache, headache, abdominal cramping, or fever.
Although the CDC says the cause of the outbreak is unknown, it revealed norovirus is a likely cause.
When an outbreak occurs on a cruise, affected passengers and crew members are isolated and deep cleaning procedures begin.
But with the cruise ending, the bigger concern for the more intimate 54,000-gross-ton Regent Seven Seas Explorer is the subsequent voyage, the first of its first Alaska sailings.
The vessel underwent deep cleaning to prevent its next group of guests from contracting the highly contagious illness during the 7-night “Return to the Frontier” cruise from Vancouver to Whittier.
Norovirus can remain on surfaces for up to 2 weeks if not properly disinfected.
That voyage, which departed on May 14, 2025, is spending a full day at sea before reaching ports of call in Klawock, Juneau, Skagway, Icy Strait Point, and Hubbard Glacier, Alaska, before arriving in Whittier, Alaska, on May 21, 2025.
Cruise Outbreaks on the Rise
According to the CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Program, this is the 17th gastrointestinal outbreak reported on a North America-based cruise ship in 2025, quickly nearing the 18 outbreaks that took place during 2024 in just the first five months of the year.
The last outbreak reported by the CDC was aboard Holland America Line’s Eurodam, which was reported on April 28, 2025. That Norovirus-affected sailing took place on its April 12 to May 3, 2025, voyage.
While three outbreaks reported did not identify the cause of illness, 12 were the result of norovirus.
But outbreaks on Regent Seven Seas Cruises are rare. The Seven Seas Explorer has never had a previous incident, and the cruise line has only recorded seven outbreaks on any ship since the CDC began recording the data in 1994.
The last such outbreak occurred aboard Seven Seas Mariner in 2018, where 38 of 652 passengers were sick.
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That ship also saw norovirus outbreaks in 2009, with 28 passengers sick, and 2008, with 33 of 620 guests and 12 crew members reporting symptoms.
It also had a salmonella outbreak in 2007 and 2005, and an unknown cause of illness in 2006. Seven Seas Navigator experienced an outbreak in 2007.
While the cruise line completed deep sanitation before launching on its current journey, passengers can take precautions to stay healthy.
If any passenger feels ill, the CDC advises to stay isolated in staterooms and to notify the ship’s medical team.