More than 60 cruise ships have been monitored and investigated by US health authorities because of cases of the new coronavirus in them, read on Sunday on the website of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) .
These sixty ships have exceeded the “limit” set by the CDC to launch an investigation.
According to The Washington Post, several of these ships were barred from docking in various Caribbean ports.
In one of them, Carnival Freedom, it was not allowed to moor on the Dutch island of Bonner.
“We are traveling on a Petri dish,” said Ashley Peterson, a 34-year-old Carnival Freedom passenger, referring to the glass or plastic cylindrical saucer used to grow microorganisms. “I have the impression that I spent the last week participating in an over-broadcast event,” he added.
In a press release, Carnival Cruises confirmed that “a small number of people on board have been isolated due to a positive test” for the SARS-CoV-2. “If it becomes necessary to cancel a station, we make every effort to find someone else, an alternative destination,” he added.
The Carnival Freedom arrived in Miami yesterday Sunday morning, disembarked all its passengers and “will depart for its next voyage as planned,” the company added.
On Wednesday, another shipping company, Royal Caribbean International, reported that fifty-five people had been diagnosed with the new coronavirus on one of its ships, which had departed from Florida on December 18.
“Nervousness”
The infected people were passengers and crew members, although 95% of the passengers were vaccinated against COVID-19, the shipping company said.
The vessel was not allowed to make stops on the Caribbean islands of Curacao and Aruba, theoretically the last of its eight-day voyage. He was expected to stay at sea until his return to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, scheduled for yesterday.
“Even if we can not get off, we will have all our friends with us,” said a 45-year-old tourist, trying to remain “optimistic”.
It was the second outbreak of the virus on a Royal Caribbean ship in less than a week.
Brenda Hammer, another 69-year-old tourist, before boarding another of the company’s cruise ships, the Odyssey of the Seas, confessed to the French Agency that she had begun to feel “nervous”: “I’m not sure I want to go anymore.”
The new coronavirus pandemic has resulted in the suspension of leisure travel of this kind for more than a year.
They resumed in June after a series of measures were announced to prevent outbreaks, such as mandatory vaccinations for workers and passengers over the age of 12 boarding Royal Caribbean ships, for example.
But the Omicron variant, highly contagious, is a new challenge for the industry.
The number of new coronavirus cases in the United States continues to rise: it has averaged nearly 190,000 on a daily basis over the past seven days, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
In February 2020, the quarantine imposed on the passengers of the cruise ship Diamond Princess in a Japanese port was one of the most characteristic episodes of the beginning of the pandemic.
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