When his throat first started hurting, John Brown didn’t think much of it.
It was March 2020 and the 48-year-old was onboard the Voyager of the Seas, a cruise travelling through the Pacific Islands.
“There were people on board that had the odd cough and splutter,” says Brown, a retired public servant living in Canberra, in Australia’s capital. He put it down to what regular cruisers refer to as “cabin cough” – the result of travelling for several days in air conditioning and close proximity to thousands of other passengers.
