Steam Packet crews have received death threats, been refused dental treatment and their children have been shunned in the playground.

Mark Woodward, chief executive of the state-owned ferry operator, gave evidence to the public accounts committee which is investigating how February’s Covid outbreak in the island could have been linked to positive cases among Ben-my-Chree seafarers.

He spoke of his shock after hearing at a Covid press conference that his crews were effectively being accused of criminality for apparently not following the rules on isolation.

Mr Woodward said the crews were ’enraged’ at the allegation.

But he listed ’horrible’ things that had followed - including children of Steam Packet crew who have been told in the playground that other children won’t play with them as they might have coronavirus.

He said there have been to death threats to staff in one case and others basically being treated as second class citizens. ’We’ve had people who have been refused dental treatment because they are Steam Packet workers. A whole range of things driven by this statement made publicly that effectively criminalised our crews,’ he said.

Mr Woodward said it was ’entirely wrong’ to call it the Steam Packet cluster.

’Patient zero’, he explained, was a UK-based crew member who had tested negative on joining the ship but tested positive on leaving a week later.

Mr Woodward said the Steam Packet had sailed 1,400 times and carried more than 20,000 passengers since Covid first arrived in the island.

transmission

But he said there had not been a single case of crew to passenger transmission and only four cases where Manx crews had caught the virus.

He said the government had insisted it should continue to operate two sailings a day which he said was ’totally unnecessary’.

Mr Woodward said during the first lockdown, Manx crews would go home after shift and follow exactly the same rules as every resident. When lockdown ended the island-based crews were free to do what they wanted in the community.

UK-based crews, however, had to isolate. There was also a requirement for seafarers to wear masks when they were in public-facing roles on board the ships.

Everything went ’pear shaped’ at a press briefing on February 18, he said, when public health director Dr Henrietta Ewart told reporters that Manx crews should have been isolating between shifts.

’We were working under the clear assumption that we knew what we were doing and government knew what they were doing. I was frankly astonished,’ said Mr Woodward. ’We have no wish to fall out or criticise government,’ he told the committee. ’I pleaded for common sense.’

He said it just ’beggars belief that anyone with any sense, let alone some of the key figures in government’ could think it tenable that Manx crews would have been expected to have been effectively in permanent isolation for a whole year. He said there had been ’no checks whatsoever’ on whether crews had been following the rules.