#GrudgePing
Posted on 12/07/2021 3:27:51 PM PST by Capt. Tom
The headlines on Sunday about a Norwegian Cruise Line ship sailing in the Gulf of Mexico were alarming.
There was an “outbreak” of COVID-19 taking place on the brand’s giant Norwegian Breakaway, as many news outlets put it, and the vessel was just hours away from docking in New Orleans.
To a casual observer, it may have seemed like we were right back to early 2020 when the just-emerging coronavirus was running rampant around cruise ships, prompting panic in port towns, quarantines on ships and the sight of ambulances meeting vessels as they docked.
But this isn’t early 2020.
As I’ve experienced first-hand in recent months on nearly a dozen cruises while documenting the restart of cruising, a lot has changed in the way cruise ships operate in this new era of COVID-19. And the details released about the positive test results for COVID-19 on the New Orleans-based Norwegian Breakaway aren’t nearly the cause for concern that some people might think — and that some of the headlines may have implied.
Surely, the word “outbreak” isn’t quite the right word to describe what happened on Norwegian Breakaway on its latest seven-night cruise to the Western Caribbean, which ended Sunday.
Just 17 passengers and crew tested positive for COVID-19 on the ship. That’s not a wildly high number of passengers and crew. And there is no evidence (at least for now) that the illness spread through the ship in a major or unusual way.
It may be that the expected spread of the new omicron variant of COVID-19 around the globe in the coming months results in more cases of the illness popping up on ships. But so far, there’s no hard evidence that we’re seeing that.
As of now, there is just one suspected case of the new omicron variant of COVID-19 on Norwegian Breakaway — a crew member from South Africa who had been in isolation for the entire voyage in question (and thus, in theory, not interacting with anyone else on board).
Here’s why I’m not all that worried about the positive cases of COVID-19 reported on Norwegian Breakaway — and I don’t think you should be, either.
The number of cases is relatively low After the testing of every single passenger and crew member on the vessel over the weekend, just 17 were found to be positive for COVID-19, according to the Louisiana Department of Health.
That’s a relatively high number of positive cases compared to what we’ve been seeing on some other ships that have reported positive cases since cruising began resuming in North America earlier this year. But it’s not inconsistent with the broader trend of relatively low numbers of COVID-19 cases on cruise vessels.
Cruise lines that operate big ships have been reporting an average of one or two passengers testing positive for the illness on sailings. But that’s an average that is bundling in some sailings with no positive cases and some with quite a few more. On the high end, a handful of vessels have recorded a dozen positive cases or more during a single sailing.
A Carnival Cruise Line ship in recent months recorded 27 cases of passengers and crew testing positive for COVID-19 on a single sailing, out of around 900 that were tested.
In that context, a report of 17 people testing positive for COVID-19 on a cruise ship seems more dog-bites-man than man-bites-dog — it isn’t all that much of an outlier.
One thing to keep in mind is that Norwegian Breakaway is a very large ship with a very high number of passengers and crew on board — even as it operates in this post-COVID-19 world at only partial capacity. On the sailing that ended on Sunday, there were around 3,200 people in all on the vessel.
So, yes, 17 passengers and crew tested positive for COVID-19. But that’s 17 out of 3,200. In other words, only about half a percent of people on the ship (about 1 in 200) tested positive.
There are strict vaccine and test mandates As we’ve written about quite a bit here at TPG, cruise lines have been far stricter about COVID-19 vaccine requirements and testing than any other segment of the travel industry.
Many lines, including Norwegian, now require every single passenger and crew member on board to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19. Cruise lines also are requiring passengers to test negative for COVID-19 just before boarding a ship.
Some lines even are requiring passengers to undergo multiple COVID-19 tests before boarding ships or while on board. One line, Viking, tests every passenger on every voyage every single day.
Passengers who test positive for COVID-19 before boarding are turned away from the ship, and those who test positive on board are quickly isolated. The result has been a transformation of cruise ships into places where vacationers are very unlikely to come in contact with someone who is COVID-19 positive.
The vaccine requirements have further transformed cruise ships into places where the illness is much less likely to spread than it was in early 2020 when a positive case or two does pop up. Even when there is a person-to-person spread of COVID-19 on a ship, the additional cases are less likely to be serious than was the case in early 2020.
Notably, the passengers and crew who tested positive for COVID-19 on Norwegian Breakaway over the weekend were asymptomatic, according to a statement from the line sent to TPG on Monday. That is, they were positive for COVID-19, yes. But they did not feel sick.
Cruise lines are well-equipped to handle illness on ships As mentioned above, cruise lines now are quickly isolating passengers who test positive for COVID-19, and they’ve implemented a number of other measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19 on vessels.
The new measures include rigorous contact tracing in cases where a passenger tests positive for COVID-19, with close contacts being initially isolated and then tested for COVID-19. Some lines are having passengers wear bracelets that record close contact with other passengers, allowing for quick and, in theory, accurate contact tracing.
Lines also have expanded the medical centers on ships and added more on-call doctors and nurses should symptomatic cases of COVID-19 arise. In addition, they’ve developed detailed plans for quickly removing COVID-19-positive passengers from ships in a safe way and getting them to a location for isolation on land — often back at their own homes.
Cruise lines also have shown they can move fast to tighten protocols even further if necessary. In its statement to TPG, Norwegian said it would require all passengers on this week’s sailing of Norwegian Breakaway to wear masks while indoors except while actively eating or drinking. It also will perform additional COVID-19 tests on passengers twice during the sailing.
Bottom line Cruise ships aren’t completely COVID-19-free. But, for the most part, the number of passengers and crew testing positive for COVID-19 on cruise ships since cruising has resumed has been relatively low.
The report of 17 people testing positive for COVID-19 over the weekend on a single Norwegian vessel is a bit of an outlier as compared to what we’ve seen in recent months with other ships where positive cases have arisen. But it’s not all that out of the ordinary.
My concern is how the Cruise Line responds to a covid outbreak, because they have to fill their ships and make money to pay of their crushing debt.
I believe Norwegian Cruise line has not responded correctly to this outbreak and will damage their recovery. -Tom
Worse: most worked in the ICU.
Sign of the times: they were fully vaxxed
Where do they get their Crew ?
And yet we go after parents who sent their one child to school who had a positive test for it, whether the test was accurate or not.
One kid - 16 less cases than the cruise ship we arent supposed to worry about.
#GrudgePing
Who goes on “cruises”.....? Good grief, you’re just asking for trouble even in the best, most carefree of times. Why not just flush $5000 down the toilet?
My experience with cruise ship crews is they come from all around the world. -Tom
Shanghied out of the taverns in Shanghai. Where else?
People are still trying to force life back to normal, and I laud them for trying. But the globalists are not going to give up their shiny new Jr. Dictator Play Set that easily...
“I believe Norwegian Cruise line has not responded correctly “
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Capt Tom thank you as always for keeping us updated on cruising in the age of covid.
I’m curious, in what way do you think NCL has not responded correctly?
Amazing how they worry so about the sniffles when salmonella and botulism toxin ooze from every surface like miasma from ginger goebbels freckles
7 Dec: Express UK: End in sight? Light at end of pandemic tunnel as Europe’s biggest Omicron outbreak is MILD
By MILLIE COOKE
An omicron outbreak at an Oslo Christmas party - seen as “the biggest in the world outside of South Africa” - is only causing mild disease. Up to 120 people who attended a restaurant in Oslo on November 26th, for a party hosted by Norwegian energy company Scatec, have all tested positive for the virus. Roughly half of them screened positive for the omicron variant.
However, Oslo infectious disease doctor Tine Ravlo said that none of them are “severely ill”.
He said: “They have symptoms like fever, cough, headache, muscle pain, fatigue, but for now, none of them has become severely ill, and none of them have been treated in hospital.
“At that time, we didn’t really have that many restrictions in Oslo, so they followed the rules.
“That is the hope. That is the best scenario we can have. That it’s getting milder, most people will get it, and they will get a natural immunity.”
If that were the case, he said, it might mark the beginning of the end for the Covid-19 pandemic...
https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1532568/Covid-news-Europe-Omicron-outbreak-Norway-Oslo-mild-symptoms-end-of-pandemic-latest
One thing they did was added in a mask policy for people onboard except when they are eating or drinking.
That alone will discourage some people from going on that Norwegian ship. - Tom
It sounds like Omicron has a lower mortality rate than the flu.
One way they do it is by hiring shills like The Points Guy. Half of their posts in the middle of the pandemic were about how wonderful cruising is.
I understand the tendencies of the various cruise blogs to put a happy face on cruising. These blogs are reticent to speculate about anything like a potential cruise line bankruptcy. They will cover it - after the fact.
Every once in a while, I will post an article from a non- cruise source, to bring in a little reality.
The press will watch this ship like a hawk, hoping for another outbreak. -Tom
We go on 'Shiprocked' every year. It's a 5-day music festival on a boat with 30 hard rock bands and 3000 of your closest family members. It's amazing!
Omicron parties!
17 people......on a fully VACCINATED cruise.....but “nothing to see here.”
That kinda sounds like fun...although I'd probably be more worried about catching something worse than Covid on that ship, lol.
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