More than 200 passengers infected with norovirus on board luxury cruise ship returning to UK

A luxury cruise experience went somewhat awry after over 200 passengers fell ill with norovirus as the vessel was making a return journey to the UK.

The Cunard Line's Queen Mary 2 ship had set off on 8 March from Southampton for a trip to New York and the Caribbean Sea, but a number of passengers and crew came down with the unpleasant illness.

An outbreak of norovirus was reported on 18 March and according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in the US, 224 of the 2,358 passengers on board the vessel and 17 of the 1,232 crew members came down with the gastrointestinal disease.

The main symptoms suffered from this maritime malady were diarrhoea and vomiting, which is not exactly the most pleasant thing for a couple of hundred people on board a ship to be doing.

Sick passengers and crew were isolated to try and contain the spread of the infection, and the remaining crew got on with cleaning and disinfecting potentially affected areas.

Over 200 passengers fell ill on the cruise ship (Naomi Baker/Getty Images)

A spokesperson for Cunard told LADbible: "We have had a small number of guests on board Queen Mary 2 who have reported symptoms of gastrointestinal illness.

"We are continuing to closely monitor the guests and, as a precaution, completed a comprehensive deep clean of the ship and immediately activated our enhanced health and safety protocols, which are proving to be effective."

Norovirus is the sort of disease that spreads especially well in an environment where a lot of people congregate together to eat and drink like a cruise ship.

Cruise liners are required to report cases of norovirus to disease prevention centres so the situation can be properly monitored and protocols can be followed.

Cunard was not the only cruise liner to report cases of norovirus last month - the Seabourn Cruise Line vessel that left Japan on 16 March and is headed for the US reported an outbreak on 21 March.

Norovirus is a gastrointestinal disease which spreads rapidly in places like cruise ships and can cause diarrhoea and vomiting (Getty Stock Photo)

The CDC says that 12 of their 461 passengers and 22 of their 405 crew came down with the disease.

A singer who spent a decade working on cruise ships previously explained that despite the vessels having medical professionals on board, it could be hard to stop the spread of disease.

She said that medical emergencies 'aren’t exactly an everyday occurrence' but they weren't exactly rare and there could be 'norovirus outbreaks that spread faster than gossip at the crew bar'.

That cruise ships are an environment where disease can spread quickly means they have protocols in place to try and deal with it, as the affected cruise liners did in these cases.