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The cruise 'Zaandam' stars in an odyssey only possible in times of coronavirus, radically different from the vacation dreamed by the 1,800 travelers who came on board on March 6 in the port of Buenos Aires bound for Chile. The Dutch-flagged ship has today registered its first fatalities among the several dozen who were already isolated with symptoms of the disease that terrorizes the world.

"Holland America Line confirms that four older passengers have died in Zaadam. Our thoughts and prayers go out to their families and we are doing everything we can to support them in these difficult times," the shipping company said in a statement.

The death of these passengers occurs when the ship remains anchored off San Miguel Island , in the Las Perlas archipelago, after preventing local authorities from passing through the Canal. The cruise ship changed its itinerary after experiencing the first refusals to head for Florida.

A cursed journey that seems to have no end for the 1,243 tourists and the 586 crew, during which I have been prevented from disembarking in ports in Chile and Peru. All passengers remain in their cabins and receive food in trays that are deposited next to the door of their rooms. The pandemic has already prevented the passage through the Panama Canal of at least 35 cruises.

Panama has been in total quarantine since last Wednesday, with 12 hours of night curfew. So far, it has counted 674 infected and nine fatalities, including a 13-year-old girl "with no pathological personal history," according to health authorities.

The Panamanian Maritime Authority supervises this morning an operation to supply food, medical equipment and test kits to the US ship, transferred directly from the Rotterdam ship, arrived from California. "This operation has been carried out more than eight miles from the city. No person will disembark in our country, " said the Panamanian agency.

The authorities intend that healthy travelers be transferred to Rotterdam after they fail the Covid-19 tests.

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