Two new public health orders put cruise companies on notice Monday, preventing additional passengers and crew from coming ashore at the Port of San Diego as the region readies for a rush of patients seeking treatment for COVID-19 in local hospitals.

In recent weeks, San Diego has seen five different cruise ships disembark thousands of passengers with the latest being the Celebrity Eclipse, which arrived Monday to release 2,300 more.

County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher, noting that San Diego has also accepted quarantine flights from Wuhan, China, and from the Grand Princess cruise ship that docked in Oakland, said the region has done its part to get people who don’t live here to their homes in other cities.

“San Diegans are certainly willing to be good partners and neighbors and to do our part to provide humanitarian assistance, and we have certainly done that,” Fletcher said.


As Eclipse passengers flowed down gangways Monday, San Diego’s total number of confirmed COVID cases increased again Monday, jumping from 519 to 603. The increase does not indicate an explosion of new cases in recent days, officials said, but is rather an artifact of the dearth of testing availability in recent weeks. Now that testing is gradually becoming more widely available, tests are getting turned around more quickly and clearing backlogs is likely to make daily numbers spike.

Hospitalizations are a more immediate indication of current COVID activity because severe symptoms tend to land people in hospital beds very quickly whether or not they’ve given a sample for testing or received their results.

Of course, there need to be enough health care workers available to handle those hospitalizations when they arrive, and there were several significant moves to bolster the health care ranks Monday.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a new initiative called California Health Corps which he told the public could staff an additional 50,000 hospital beds statewide by temporarily expanding the ranks of health care workers, tapping medical retirees, medical and nursing students, public health professionals and disaster response teams statewide. The state is planning to compensate those who accept. Applications can be made at healthcorps.ca.gov.


San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer made a similar move Monday, signing an executive order that designates all city employees as disaster service workers.

The action will allow any city employee, regardless of job title, to help protect life and property, support the city’s emergency operations center and mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 emergency. The city’s workforce includes more than 11,000 employees.

“It’s a very proactive step that will help give the city of San Diego the flexibility and the capability to handle whatever may come our way, especially as we prepare for a surge of (COVID-19) cases and activity in the future,” Faulconer said.

Faulconer said some city employees had already been assisting with duties outside of their job descriptions. For example, some code enforcement officers helped parks and recreation staff members educate residents about beach and park closures.


Cruise orders

The county’s new orders bar additional cruise ships from dropping off passengers in the harbor without public health approval if any passengers have COVID-19. A second order bars any cruise ship from disembarking passengers or crew for any reason after Tuesday, March 31. Ships are, however, allowed to dock “solely for the purposes of receiving fuel and provisions as long as no employee or passenger disembarks.”

The move comes after several people who were aboard the Disney Wonder, which arrived on March 19 with more than 2,000 passengers aboard, subsequently saw a passenger and several crew pop up on the COVID radar.

Though the Wonder has not had any passengers for more than a week now, it has remained in the harbor staying at the B Street cruise terminal until Apr. 19. In the meantime, said Dr. Eric McDonald, medical director of the county’s epidemiology department, several of the ships crew, who remain aboard, have required medical attention for suspected COVID infections.


“There are two pending cases, and there was one emergency evacuation from the ship overnight,” McDonald said during the county’s regular coronavirus news conference Monday afternoon.

He said the Wonder, which arrived in San Diego reporting that none of its passengers or crew was exhibiting any COVID symptoms, has subsequently seen significant illness develop after arrival.

“There was one passenger that was known to be positive who is currently hospitalized and there is one crew member that is known to be positive that is currently hospitalized,” McDonald said.

The crew member, he added, remained on board for some time but eventually had to be sent ashore for treatment, but not before having close contact with six other crew members who are all still quarantined on the Wonder. The passenger went to their San Diego home for a 14-day self quarantine. They had close contact with “less than five” family members.


McDonald was asked why the public health department is allowing the remaining eclipse passengers to disembark in San Diego given the positive cases associated with the Wonder.

McDonald said there is “really no more of a risk to the general public than the fact that there is community transmission (of COVID), and there may be individuals in the public that have asymptomatic, incubating, COVID-19.”

San Diego has turned out to be quite a port in the COVID storm.

The Eclipse will leave San Diego on Tuesday, March 31 around 5 p.m. to go to Acapulco where approximately 200 passengers will disembark on April 4. These passengers do not possess appropriate documents for entry into the U.S. The Eclipse is scheduled to return to San Diego’s outer anchorage on April 7 with no passengers, joining what has become a sort of ghost fleet of massive but mostly empty cruise liners that have stuck around in the area.


According to the port, Regent’s Seven Seas Splendor which is anchored just outside the bay, is scheduled to dock at the Broadway Pier on April 1 and remain until April 11. The Celebrity Millennium, which never disembarked passengers in San Diego, is scheduled to move from the open ocean to the B Street Pier for supplies on April 2.

More San Diego orders

Faulconer did not stop with designating city employees as disaster service workers Monday.

His order will also allow city library workers to assist hospitals by helping with supply distribution and food delivery and also expanded the exception of time restrictions on deliveries to include not only grocery deliveries but medical supply deliveries. All building permits and applications will be extended for 180 days, fees for business licenses will be waived, and any business-related fees for permits or assessments will be deferred for 120 days.


Faulconer also provided an update on the Small Business Relief Fund, which was launched Friday. He said the city received more than 5,200 applications. If every business that submitted an application qualifies, the demand will far exceed the more than $6 million that is currently available.

“I think it really speaks to the need and just how deeply our small businesses need our help and need our support,” Faulconer said.

