The 340 passengers of the Ponant cruise ship confined

It’s the end of the trip. The Paul-Gauguin cruise ship from the Ponant company, which crisscrossed French Polynesia, had to backtrack after a client tested positive for Covid-19, reported the High Commission of the Republic in this territory. overseas. Containment is currently in place on the boat for the 148 other passengers and the 192 crew members.

Guests locked in their rooms

The members of the liner left Thursday before learning, overnight from Saturday to Sunday, that one of the passengers tested positive for Covid-19. The boat was calling at Bora Bora when the announcement was made. The nationality of the positive passenger has not filtered, but it is a foreigner and not a resident of French Polynesia like most of the other customers of the boat. Since then, no one can leave their cabin and meals are delivered directly there. The rest of the passengers were tested this Sunday but the results are not yet known.

French Polynesia has been relatively unaffected by the coronavirus since only 62 cases and no deaths have been recorded. Tourism has been relaunched there with an obligation: to submit to a Covid-19 test before embarking for the archipelago. This test is then analyzed by the Louis-Malardé Institute, four days after their arrival. It was precisely one of these self-samplings that turned out to be positive in one of the passengers.

A new Diamond Princess?

This episode is reminiscent of that of the Diamond Princess liner which, last February, became one of the first global clusters off the coast of Japan. Again, it was first a single passenger who was infected with the coronavirus. The result of a Japanese study revealed that a single person contaminated 700 other passengers. A study which confirms that a few supercontaminators are responsible for 80% of infections.