Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency) recommended to the government this Wednesday (12) the definitive interruption of the cruise ship season in Brazil.
In a technical note sent to the Ministry of Health and the Civil House, the agency pointed to an advance in Covid-19 cases, driven by the ômicron variant, and said that “the current scenario is unfavorable to the continuity of operations”.
Clia Brasil, an association that represents cruise ship companies in the country, has already announced on January 3rd the suspension of new operations in Brazilian ports until the 21st of the same month, but the government has not yet taken a definitive decision on the boarding authorization.
The government authorized in October 2021 the resumption of cruises, despite Anvisa’s contrary opinion. The 2021-2022 season started in early November.
In the technical note, Anvisa states that 1,177 cases of Covid were detected among crew and passengers of five cruise ships that operated in Brazil from November to the first week of January. Of the total infections, 1,146 were confirmed from December 26 to January 6 alone.
On December 31, Anvisa recommended suspending the season “until more data are available to assess the epidemiological scenario”. Before the government decided on Anvisa’s suggestion, Clia announced the suspension of operations.
On the same day, the Minister of Tourism, Gilson Machado, told leaf that the season could be maintained under looser sanitary control rules. He advocated greater government tolerance for infections on ships.
This is because an ordinance of the Ministry of Health, in force since the end of October last year, defines four epidemiological levels for waterway transport trips and protocols to be followed. Higher tiers have tougher restrictions, such as quarantining a vessel, and are defined by criteria such as the number of infections recorded.
In the note sent to the government, Anvisa says that travel on tourist ships should be terminated “as a necessary action to protect the health of the population”.
“It is still quite uncertain how the epidemiological profile on cruise ships, in a context of the Covid-19 pandemic, will develop, even considering the increase in population vaccination and the wide commercial availability of tests with high sensitivity and specificity for the detection of Sars-CoV-2 infection in travelers,” the agency said.
The recommendation to interrupt voyages was due to the sudden increase in cases of Covid-19 infection detected on vessels operating cruise ships and also due to the omicron variant.
In the first week of 2022, passengers reported, on social media, lack of food and cleaning on cruises that had activities interrupted by the Covid outbreak.
“In recent weeks, the two affected cruise lines have experienced a number of situations that have directly impacted operations on the ships, making the continuation of cruises at this time impractical,” CLIA said in a statement released on January 3.
The entity also said, in the same statement, to regret the suspension of new activities and said that the health protocols were working. CLIA also said that the cruise season was expected to attract more than 360,000 tourists, with an impact of R$1.7 billion.
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