Cruise Ships Relaunching in the USA

Carnival Cruise Line advised guests and travel agents of a new plan to phase in the resumption of service in North American during 2020.

According to the May 4, 2020 announcement, beginning on August 1st, a total of 8 ships will operate out of south Florida and Galveston, Texas. 

The key elements of this relaunch plan include the cancellation of all North American cruises from now until July 31st.

And, other than the above-referenced service from Galveston, Miami, and Port Canaveral, all other North American and Australian homeport cruises will be canceled through August 31st.

‘We are committed to supporting all public health efforts to manage the COVID-19 situation. We are taking a measured approach, focusing our return to service on a select number of homeports where we have more significant operations,’ said this statement.

‘We will use this additional time to continue to engage experts, government officials, and stakeholders on additional protocols and procedures to protect the health and safety of our guests, crew, and the communities we serve.’

The disruption in cruise ship voyages began in early February 2020, when the Diamond Princess ship docked in Japan with an extensive number of passengers and crew infected with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and various fatalities related to the COVID-19 disease.

On February 20th, the World Health Organization announced that more than half the known cases of COVID-19 in the world outside China were on the Diamond Princess.

This luxury vessel had 3,700 people on board, with many sick and confined to their cabins.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) questioned the efficacy of the onboard lockdown, and infectious disease expert advising the White House on the COVID-19 pandemic said the vessel’s quarantine process had “failed.”

But since the international spotlight moved away from the stricken cruise ship, data have been published that tell a slightly different story. It seems that the lockdown did have a measurable effect on restricting contagion.

And there are signs that the ship’s ventilation and wastewater systems did not worsen the spread of disease.

Questions over whether the situation could have been better managed remain. However, the Diamond Princess is emerging as an unfortunate but informative experiment that taught scientists much about COVID-19. Those lessons could help authorities aiming to stave off the disease in other places where it spreads easily, such as nursing homes and prisons, concluded a study published in the BMJ.

Travel alert news published by Vax-Before-Travel.