(Miami) More than 60 cruise ships are under investigation by US health authorities after the appearance of COVID-19 cases on board, can we read Sunday on the site of CDC, main public health agency in the USA.
These 60 vessels have reached the “threshold” set by the “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention” to merit such an investigation.
According to the daily Washington post, several ships were refused a stopover in several Caribbean ports.
One of them, the Carnival Freedom, was thus not authorized to moor on the Dutch island of Bonaire.
“We sail aboard a Petri dish,” the container used in laboratories for growing bacteria, said Ashley Peterson, a 34-year-old Carnival Freedom passenger, at the Washington post. “I feel like I spent last week at a super-propagating event.”
In a statement, Carnival Cruises confirmed that a “small number on board have been isolated due to a positive COVID-19 test.”
“If it becomes necessary to cancel a stopover, we will do our best to find an alternative destination,” said Carnival. The Carnival Freedom arrived in Miami on Sunday morning, disembarked all of its passengers, and “will depart for its next trip as scheduled,” the company said.
Another company, Royal Caribbean International, said on Wednesday that 55 people had tested positive for COVID-19 on board one of its ships that left Florida on December 18.
Those infected include passengers and crew, although 95% of those on board are vaccinated against the coronavirus.
The boat was not allowed to stop in Curaçao and Aruba, islands of the Netherlands Antilles. He was to stay at sea until his return to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, scheduled for Sunday.
It was the second outbreak of coronavirus to be identified on a Royal Caribbean boat in less than a week.
The coronavirus had caused the suspension of cruise activities for more than a year.
They resumed in June with a series of measures to try to keep the virus at bay, such as the compulsory vaccine for employees and passengers over 12 years old for Royal Caribbean for example.
But the highly contagious Omicron variant presents a new challenge.
The number of COVID-19 cases in the United States continues to increase, with nearly 190,000 new cases daily over the last seven days on average, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.
In February 2020, the quarantine imposed in a Japanese port on passengers on a cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, was one of the milestones of the start of the pandemic.