Just days into what was supposed to be the Seattle cruise industry’s comeback from COVID, a cruise ship steamed into Elliott Bay with dozens of passengers infected with the illness.
Tuesday’s arrival of the stricken Carnival Spirit was an inauspicious inaugural for an industry that pumped nearly $1 billion into the state economy before COVID and whose return is seen as key to the revival of downtown Seattle.
Carnival Cruise Line declined to say how many of Spirit’s approximately 3,000 passengers tested positive for COVID.
