CDC mandates on-board testing

THE United States’ Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) has provided “technical instructions” for the mitigation of COVID-19 among cruise ship crews, as part of its guidance for the new Framework for Conditional Sailing Order issued last week (CW 02 Nov).

The update confirms by 29 Dec - 60 days after the lifting of the previous no sail order cruise lines “must implement onboard testing capabilities to be able to test all symptomatic travellers (crew members and future passengers) and their close contacts for SARS-CoV-2”.

All cruise ships must procure rapid PT-PCR point of care equipment to test symptomatic travellers and crew on board, with any technical items required to have been evaluated by the Food & Drug Administration.

Prior to obtaining the PCR test, equipment operators must contact the CDC, with antigen testing not recommended because it is more likely to miss COVID-19 cases.

While onboard laboratories are being established, all crew members currently on board ships must have specimens collected for testing, which are required to be tested shoreside at a certified PCR testing laboratory.

Crew members who join ships in the lead-up to any restart must be tested on embarkation and also then immediately quarantine on the ship for 14 days.

While in quarantine, any confirmed cases and close contacts, as well as symptomatic crew members, must be accommodated in single-occupancy cabins with private bathrooms, with meals to be packaged in disposable materials with single-use cutlery and delivered without any face-toface interaction.

A colour code system will be used by the CDC to classify each ship’s status, with “green ships” to have no confirmed cases of COVID-19 for 28 days, no crew member transfers from a ship with cases in 28 days, and the 14-day quarantine of embarking crew members.

Ships will become “yellow” if they have one or more suspected cases of COVID-19 pending PCR test results, while “red ships” are those with confirmed cases in the last 28 days.

Social events, group training, crew bars, gyms and in-person employee meetings are only permitted on green ships.

The CDC is expected to provide further updates of procedures in the coming weeks as it develops protocols around additional phases of resumptions.