Originally Posted by
radonc1
It appears that the number of positive Covid positive patients has now risen to 5
SeaDream 1: five passengers test positive for Covid-19 on Caribbean cruise ship
"The SeaDream is carrying 53 passengers and 66 crew, with the majority of passengers hailing from the US, according to Sue Bryant, a cruise ship reporter who is aboard the ship.
She told the Associated Press that one passenger became sick on Wednesday and forced the ship to turn back to Barbados, where it had departed from on Saturday. However, the ship had yet to dock in Barbados as local authorities tested those on board. The captain announced that at least five passengers had tested positive, Bryant said."
As I have said before, until we come up with an international protocol for how we deal with the Covid positive but not ill patient who is a passenger on board, cruise ships will remain moored off-shore for the foreseeable future.
Frankly, that international protocol should indeed be "ship remains moored off-shore with cabin isolation until everyone on board tests negative multiple times over multiple days with those tests run by outside labs, and stiff criminal penalties for crew or passengers who lie about status or symptoms." Every single passenger who boarded a cruise since mid-February knew, and especially now knows the risk and have voluntarily signed up for this possibility, no whining. I'm grudgingly okay with them "experimenting" with cruises like this to see if any particular pre-cruise testing etc measures help, but when the experiment fails it should be "oh well, come back when all who survived are healthy."
The nature of this virus and the accuracy of testing available makes it unlikely that a simple test or two while people are "in the wild" before boarding can be sufficient to guarantee zero infections, which is the only way you can have a non-mask non-fully-distanced cruise. Perhaps something similar to the NBA bubble would work, with the entire cruise isolated individually in hotel rooms for a couple weeks being tested periodically before final testing and boarding. Yes, impractical and costly, no, don't care. There are so many more important things to be able to reopen than this.