Thought of the Day - December 27 2021 - Cruisin' for a Bruisin'

As you know Canada started allowing cruise ships back into Canadian ports last month, however, as it is not really the northern cruising season there have been few takers ( Thought of the Day - September 3 2021 - Cruising ). This is not actually a bad thing as it gives us a chance to see how other regions are getting on.

As you may have heard Royal Caribbean said at the beginning of last week that 48 people aboard its flagship Symphony of the Seas tested positive for COVID-19 (all but one has been vaccinated). This despite disembarking six COVID-riddled guests earlier in the cruise.

The Royal Caribbean announcement comes on the heels of the announcement by Norwegian Cruise Lines that they had 17 confirmed cases of COVID-19 on board (all vaccinated). Their ship left New Orleans on a seven-day cruise on November 28th, and made stops in Belize, Honduras and Mexico before returning to the U.S. city on December 5th. All passengers were tested for the coronavirus before they were allowed to disembark.

Now, over this past weekend, it was announced that the passengers and crew aboard the Carnival Freedom cruise caught the virus so the ship was denied entry to Bonaire and Aruba, Carnival said in a statement. So now we have another plague ship standing out to sea.

Of course, respiratory infections have always been fairly commonplace on cruise ships, each year it is estimated around 200 people die while cruising most due to medical issues. I still find it amazing that people's first reaction to hearing of COVID on a ship is that it must be due to someone not being vaccinated. Like nope, as we have discussed before vaccination does little to reduce transmission ( Thought of the Day - October 8 2021 - Delta Spreaders ). This is all about cruise ships being the perfect petri dish - remember it was the outbreaks on cruise ships that started Canadian's awareness of COVID ( Thought of the Day - May-11 - Thank You, People of the Diamond Princess ), and the cruise industry will be one of the last to recover from the pandemic.

Let's hope Omicron does translate to just another bad flu to worry about, otherwise, the 2022 cruising season is likely to be a bust.

Cheers

Cliff