Islands Turn Cruise Ship Away Due to Onboard COVID-19 Cases
Late on Wednesday, Royal Caribbean confirmed that 55 fully vaccinated passengers and crew members sailing aboard Odyssey of the Seas tested positive for COVID-19, causing the ship to be turned away from two of its scheduled Caribbean ports of call. The infections surfaced just a few days after the ship’s December 18 departure from Fort Lauderdale on a roundtrip eight-day, holiday-themed, Caribbean itinerary.
“During routine weekly testing of our fully vaccinated crew members, there were test results that came back positive for COVID-19,” Royal Caribbean spokesperson Lyan Sierra-Caro said on Tuesday night. “Close contacts were quickly identified, and they each immediately went into quarantine.”
Per CruiseMapper’s information, Odyssey of the Seas had already spent time in CocoCay, Royal Caribbean’s private island resort in the Bahamas, but has been denied entry to the next two destinations on its itinerary: Curacao and Aruba.
CNN reported that health authorities in Curacao denied permission for the Quantum Ultra class-ship to dock in Willemstad because the percentage of people onboard who were infected with COVID-19 was too high at over one percent.
According to a report from the Curacao Chronicle, the island’s national epidemiologist Dr. Izzy Gerstenbluth, said Wednesday: “The day before yesterday, 18 crew members were positive, yesterday 36 and this morning there were 51. In addition, several crew members have not been quarantined, so there is a good chance that passengers have also been infected.”
Gerstenbluth explained that the country’s protocols dictate that no more than one percent of a ship’s onboard population can be infected in order for it to be allowed to dock. “With these numbers of infections, that percentage has been exceeded and we are therefore not eager to receive these people on the island, especially not with the current figures on the island,” he said.
Odyssey of the Seas is currently sailing with 3,587 passengers and 1,599 crew, 95 percent of whom are fully vaccinated. Royal Caribbean regulations require that all crew members, and all passengers aged 12 and over complete an approved course of inoculations at least 14 days prior to embarkation. Additionally, crew members are required to get tested at least once a week. Unvaccinated children under 12 are required to present a negative PCR test, as well as rapid-testing negative at the terminal before boarding.
At this point, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is getting involved to investigate the dozens of cases aboard the cruise, since it hasn’t been immediately clear whether these breakthrough infections are linked to the highly-contagious Omicron variant that’s on its way to becoming the world’s dominant COVID-19 strain.
“CDC is investigating the recent increase in COVID-19 cases identified on Royal Caribbean International’s Odyssey of the Seas,” CDC spokesperson David Daigle told USA Today on Thursday. “All cases appear to be mild or asymptomatic. Additionally, there have been no COVID-19 related hospitalizations, medical evacuations, ventilator use or deaths from this ship.”
Only a few days prior to Odyssey of the Seas’ onboard outbreak, Royal Caribbean’s Symphony of the Seas had reported its own mid-cruise COVID-19 situation, with at least 48 people ultimately testing positive when the ship disembarked in Miami on December 18. It had likewise been sailing a round-trip Caribbean cruise from Florida with 6,091 passengers and crew members aboard, 95 percent of whom, again, were fully vaccinated.