Suspected of being clusters, more than 60 cruise ships in the sights of US health authorities

It was aboard one of these gigantic ships that one of the first clusters of the Covid-19 epidemic was declared: in February 2020, the cruise liner Diamond Princess was placed in quarantine in a Japanese port. Even today, these boats are closely watched, in particular by the American government. More than 60 cruise ships are the subject of investigations by the health authorities of the United States after the appearance of cases of Covid-19 on board, we can read Sunday on the site of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC), the country’s main public health agency.

These 60 ships reached the “threshold” set by the CDC 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 are sailing aboard a Petri dish”, this container used in laboratories for the culture of bacteria, said Ashley Peterson, a passenger of the Carnival Freedom, at the Washington post. “I feel like I spent last week at a super-propagating event.” In a statement to AFP, Carnival Cruises confirmed that a “small number on board had been isolated due to a positive Covid test”.

“If it becomes necessary to cancel a stopover, we will do our best to find an alternative destination”, continues the document. The Carnival Freedom arrived in Miami on Sunday morning, disembarked all of its passengers, and “will depart for his next trip as planned”, the company said.

On Wednesday, another company, Royal Caribbean International, said 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.

“Even though we can’t come down, we all have our friends with us”, comments Brij Patel, a 45-year-old cruise line, trying to stay “optimistic”. It was the second outbreak of coronavirus to be identified on a Royal Caribbean boat in less than a week. Brenda Hammer, a 69-year-old tourist to board one of the company’s other ships, the Odyssey of the Seas, said her “nervousness” to AFP: “I’m not sure I want to go anymore”, she says.

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 has again challenged companies. 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.