It started out as the holiday of a lifetime and quickly turned into a ship in lockdown, searching for a port in a COVID-19 storm.
Dateline charts the story of the MV Greg Mortimer cruise ship that left Argentina three days after coronavirus was declared a pandemic. The holiday bubble soon burst for the 217 passengers and crew when a fever was first detected on board.
This quickly escalated to 60 per cent of the people on board testing positive for COVID-19. What ensued was an international rescue effort between Uruguay, Australia and New Zealand. But the saga of those who sailed on the Greg Mortimer was far from over.
The crew and some critically ill Australian’s had been left behind, sick, scared and unsure they would ever get home. One crew-member, Ronnie Lorenzo, never made it back.
Dateline speaks exclusively to his widow in the Philippines about the ultimate cost of cruising during a pandemic.
