At least four ocean cruise ships were turned away from ports of call or were prohibited from letting passengers disembark in the Americas this week because of COVID-19 cases aboard.
The recent cruise ship disruptions include:
Jalisco health authorities initially were going to allow people testing negative to disembark. However, they changed their mind, citing an"exponential growth of confirmed cases in the crew" by Thursday, the department said. Only one crew member had tested positive less than a week earlier, the department said.
Ports in the Caribbean islands of Bonaire and Aruba turned away the Carnival Freedom ship on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, after"a small number" of people aboard tested positive for COVID, the cruise line said.It was allowed to stop in Curacao on Tuesday. Dr. Izzy Gerstenbluth, the national epidemiologist for Curacao, said the ship alerted him before it arrived that crew members had tested positive.
Curacao health officials decided the percentage of people aboard who tested positive was too high for the nation to allow the ship to dock, the Curacao Chronicle reported.According to Royal Caribbean, the ship can accommodate up to 5,550 guests plus 1,600 crew members. It wasn't clear whether the ship was fully occupied.
Positive COVID tests aboard cruise ships aren't unique to this month -- they have happened other times since cruises resumed departures from US shores this summer. Now, the spread of the Omicron variant"may shape how some destination authorities view even a small number of cases, even when they are being managed with our vigorous protocols," Carnival spokesperson AnneMarie Mathews told CNN Friday in a prepared statement.
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