- At least two crew members died on the Norwegian Gem in April, according to crew members and emails obtained by Business Insider.
- One of those deaths was discovered on Thursday when Dr. Alex Guevara, a senior doctor on the Gem, was found dead in his cabin. An email obtained by Business Insider, which was sent to medical staff, said Guevara died from “cardio-respiratory arrest” and had “no symptoms of COVID-19.”
- For crew members on Norwegian Cruise Line ships, now docked in the Bahamas to consolidate crews and move employees between ships, information about the deaths has largely come through whisper networks, rather than official communication from the company.
- In a video from April 13, a crew member filmed people in hazmat gear bring a covered body out on a stretcher and into an ambulance. The video spread across ships, but NCL never formally acknowledged the incident.
- Norwegian Cruise Line did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
The Norwegian Gem had just arrived in the Bahamas on Thursday when Dr. Alex Guevara, a senior doctor on the Norwegian Gem, was found dead in his cabin.
Guevara had zero symptoms the night before, and he was packing to go home, according to an email obtained by Business Insider, sent to the cruise line’s medical teams from Carlos Gonzalez, chief medical officer for Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings.
“He did die in his sleep from a cardio-respiratory arrest,” Gonzalez wrote. “Alex had no symptoms of COVID-19, and actually had done an amazing job treating respiratory cases onboard his ship.”
Rumors of Guevara’s death quickly spread between thousands of crew members on the handful of NCL ships which had left docks in Miami for the Bahamas. The ships set sail to the private island of Great Stirrup Cay last week as part of a plan to rearrange its crew members, stuck at sea since March due to coronavirus.
With no official information about deaths on board, crew members have relied on a whisper network with friends across ships who share updates with each other on the health of their crew. Information about which coworkers have officially tested positive trickles in slowly, and crew members rarely get updates on their coworkers who have been forced to quarantine over suspected infections.
Crew members on the Gem, where Guevara worked, received a letter on April 23 which told them a crew member who disembarked on April 14 had tested positive for COVID-19, Cruise Law News reported last week.
As of April 9, the Norwegian Bliss, Breakaway and Encore each had at least one case reported and crew on NCL's Pride of America ship believed that at least nine people had COVID-19 in mid-April.
Throughout the crisis, Norwegian Cruise Line has not responded to multiple requests for comment from Business Insider, including for this story.
Unlike its competitor Carnival Corporation, NCL has not provided any official information about the number of crew members who have tested positive for COVID-19 or that have died on its ships since the coronavirus crisis first began.
Crew learned of deaths over text message
Just two weeks before his death, Guevara had been on the other side of tragedy on the Gem.
A 56-year-old male crew member from the Philippines had died on the ship after being treated on board for pneumonia and tachycardia arrhythmia, according to a statement prepared by NCL's communications department and obtained by Business Insider. The prepared remarks were never publicly released, but they were emailed to some team members on April 13.
Though pneumonia is common in people infected with the coronavirus, NCL didn't believe he died from COVID-19, according to the remarks. If anyone asked why the crew member was never tested, the employees were told to say that "Bahamian officials did not allow anyone to disembark the vessel," according to email.
NCL never addressed this death outside of a small group of staffers, but many crew members already knew someone had died.
Sitting at port in Miami on April 13 with little to do but look out their windows, the crew watched as the ambulance arrived at the Gem. A group of people in hazmat suits rolled out a body, covered in a white sheet, using a stretcher. A video of the event, shared with Business Insider by two different crew members on two other ships, spread widely.
Then 1 day and 11 hours after the Gem docked in Miami, it set back out to sea to return to the Bahamas for the planned crew transfers, according to Vessel Finder voyage data.
With no official information on either death, crew members said they suspected coronavirus, and expressed fear that the ships might be infected.
Two people - one on board and one a crew member's friend - posited whether the cruise line was being completely forthcoming about coronavirus cases on the ship, especially since another cruise line reportedly tried to cover up cases among workers.
Outside of NCL, an executive, a doctor, and a board member at Aurora Expeditions separately encouraged the doctor on its Greg Mortimer cruise ship to downplay the ship's health situation in declaration forms as it headed to Uruguay in late March, according to a Miami Herald report published Tuesday. (Uruguay let the ship dock in its waters on March 27 after the doctor provided accurate information.)
Dr. Mauricio Usme, the lead physician on the ship, ultimately contracted COVID-19 himself, according to the report. At least 31 of the 84 crew members onboard the ship had contracted the virus, and one crew member died on the ship on April 17.
Still docked in the Bahamas, the health and fate of the remaining NCL ships is uncertain.
On Thursday, crew members immediately heard from one another that Guevara's body was found in his room when he failed to disembark from the Gem and onto the ship organized to take him home, according to two people who had heard the rumors.
By Friday morning, crew members still had not received an official update from NCL on the doctor's death, but a new rumor had emerged. One of the nurses who worked closely with Guevara was removed from the ship, two people had heard. One of the people had heard she tested positive for COVID-19.
Information was spreading fast, but no one could say with confidence that it was true.
"In this company, they have stopped communicating," one person said.
Áine Cain contributed to this reporting.
