From St. Louis Post-Dispatch

A case of measles aboard a cruise ship has led health officials to quarantine hundreds of people on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia.

The island’s chief medical officer, Merlene Fredericks James, said authorities confirmed the case Tuesday and locked the vessel down in an effort to stymie the spread of the highly contagious disease.

There’s been a resurgence of the illness in the United States, fueled by anti-vaccination misinformation.

“No one was allowed to leave the ship,” Fredericks James said in a statement. “Because of the risk of potential infection, not just from the confirmed measles case but from other persons who may be on the boat at the time, we thought it prudent to make a decision not to allow anyone to disembark.”

The island has avoided an outbreak of the disease locally since 1990, the acting national epidemiologist, Michelle Francois, said in another statement. But as measles cases continue to surge in the United States and other areas with tourism ties to St. Lucia, residents have been bracing themselves, fearing the virus could find its way there aboard plane or boat.

Nearly 300 passengers are on the quarantined ship, and the confirmed case was found in a female crew member, NBC News reported.

Health officials did not identify the cruise ship, but a sergeant with the St. Lucia Coast Guard told NBC that the vessel is Freewinds, the 440-foot boat owned by the Church of Scientology.

Representatives of the Church of Scientology did not respond to requests for comment.

The ship-tracking website MarineTraffic.com shows Freewinds — the only passenger ship it has on record by that name — docked at a St. Lucia port. Photographs of the vessel there appear to match those on the Church of Scientology’s website.

The quarantine in St. Lucia, along with others in California, reflect the urgent public-health problem that measles can become. More than 700 people have been infected this year — the highest number of cases since measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000.

For more on this story go to; https://www.stltoday.com/news/measles-means-quarantine-for-hundreds-on-cruise-ship-in-caribbean/article_39bd6c32-dab9-5652-b25a-32b01de77cb9.html