South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
First cruise line cancellations as every US ship now under COVID-19 watches
As the omicron variant of
COVID-19 rages across the U.S., the spread has forced at least one cruise line to call off some sailings from Florida.
Norwegian Cruise Line said Thursday it had canceled the remainder of an 11-night Panama Canal sailing of the Norwegian Pearl that departed Miami on Monday as well as a planned nine-night Caribbean sailing of the Norwegian Getaway from Miami “due to COVID related circumstances.”
The ships are not alone, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention monitoring case reports on every ship sailing with passengers from the U.S. The CDC stated that for the two-week period from Dec. 15-29, all cruise lines reported 5,013
COVID-19 cases, compared to 162 from Nov. 30-Dec. 14.
“Our first priority is the health and safety of our guests, crew and the communities we visit. Due to ongoing travel restrictions, we’ve had to modify a few sailings,” according to an update on the cruise line’s website.
The line has also pushed planned restarts on six other ships in the U.S. and overseas including the Pride of America in Hawaii to March 5 instead of Jan.
22. Other ships delayed until at least March include
Norwegian Jewel from Panama, Norwegian Jade from Rome, Norwegian Star from Barcelona, Norwegian Sun in Asia and Norwegian Spirit in Australia.
The passengers who returned to Florida after less than two days aboard the Pearl said they were told it was because crew members had become ill with coronavirus. The were back in Miami on Wednesday, the same day passengers were supposed to depart on Norwegian Getaway.
Matt Daly, of Surf City, North Carolina, said he drove to Miami for that cruise, and that although it was canceled late Tuesday, Daly and his wife were driving overnight and did not see the notification until they arrived at the port Wednesday.
“I’m never leaving North Carolina,” Daly said. “Too much of a hassle.”
As of Wednesday, the CDC has investigations for all 92 cruise ships sailing in the U.S. with passengers after each ship reported COVID-19 cases amid the spread of the omicron variant. Each of the ships are classified as Yellow in the CDC’s color-coded status, meaning they either had at least 0.1% of passengers test positive for COVID-19, or have had at least one crew member test positive.
That means if a ship is sailing with 4,000 passengers, that four or more have tested positive. The only
ships approved for sailing from the U.S. with the less severe orange or green status are those that have yet to sail with passengers.
No ship is listed as red status, meaning the facilities on board to deal with any sort of COVID-19 outbreak have been overwhelmed.
Elsewhere in the world, Royal Caribbean had to cancel its planned Thursday voyage aboard Spectrum of the Seas from Hong Kong after the Hong Kong Department of Health notified the line that a person infected with COVID-19 had been in close contact with nine people on board.
According to a statement from the cruise line, those nine guests were quarantined, and all tested negative after PCR tests, but the ship returned to port on Wednesday so all crew and guests could be tested. A required second round of testing Friday for the crew meant the line had to cancel the sailing.
The CDC raised to the highest level its travel risk assessment for cruises on Dec. 30 stating that cruise travel should be avoided no matter passengers’ vaccination status.
Despite the increase in CDC investigations in the U.S., NCL has been the only line so far to cancel a sailing because of COVID-19 since the industry slowly started getting back to business last summer after having been shut down for 18 months
after the pandemic brought cruises to a halt in March 2020.
The long effort to get ships back to business included moving from a CDC no-sail order to a conditional sail order that required lines to impose more than 80 COVID-19 safety protocols such as carving out space on board to deal with positive cases so that passengers and crew could be quarantined in the event of an outbreak.
That conditional sail order remains in effect, but will become a voluntary program on Jan. 15. The order was already voluntary for ships sailing out of Florida after the state brought a federal lawsuit against the CDC and won a temporary injunction. Despite that ruling, cruise lines have all adhered to the safety protocols and are expected to continue those protocols after Jan. 15.
That includes wearing masks in indoor spaces and when social distancing
isn’t possible. Cruise lines have also required vaccines for passengers and crew as well as proof of negative
COVID-19 tests ahead of departures.
With those protocols in place, cruise line officials have insisted ships remain safe options for vacations, even though cruise lines were at the center of some deadly COVID19 outbreaks when the pandemic first emerged in early 2020, prompting the industry shutdown.
Last week Royal Caribbean Group Chairman & CEO Richard Fain said the omicron variant will affect travelers in the short-term, but with it not being as severe as previous variants of COVID-19, the long-term outlook for the industry remains strong.
“Omicron is having a big short-term impact on everyone, but many observers see this as a major step toward COVID-19 becoming endemic rather than epidemic,” Fain said. “We
don’t like to see even one case, but our experience is a fraction of the comparable statistics of virtually any other comparable location or industry.”
Cruise lines under Royal Caribbean Group, which also include Celebrity and Silversea, sailed with more than 1.1 million passengers since restart efforts, according to a company press release. Of those,
1,745 people had positive tests, a positivity rate of
0.16%.
Those numbers don’t include recent sailings with the increased number of positive omicron results.
“The company is navigating through the ever-evolving information on the omicron variant,” said Royal Caribbean Group’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Calvin Johnson. “Our case count has spiked, but the level of severity is significantly milder.”