#disease-outbreaks

#disease-outbreaks

The basic structure of cruise travel still creates the same challenge: many people sharing the same meals, the same air, the same water systems and the same common spaces. That is why outbreaks keep returning, and why cruise ships remain a useful reminder that public health is shaped as much by design as by germs.

When asylum seekers first arrive at Manston, a former military base outside Ramsgate in Kent, they are ushered from one enormous, grubby marquee to the next for a series of interviews and checks. As many as 1,000 people a day are processed at the site after crossing the Channel in small boats, and interviews continue through the night. Upon arrival in the UK, exhausted and disorientated, their phones and other belongings are taken from them and placed in distinctive blue plastic bags.