The first SeaDream Caribbean Cruise shutdown after Covid scare.....
 

I have been following this guy's posts on his first cruise since covid. He wrote about the multitudes of tests and protocols put into place just to get on board the five * boat.

Well...it now looks like covid joined them as well. The cruise has been canceled.

And this is a small luxury line...can you imagine trying to stave off covid on a ship of 1000's.

https://thepointsguy.com/news/caribb...care-seadream/

Preventing COVID on a mega ship is easy. Just keep it moored at the dock with the gangways up. :)

This sentence from the article caught my attention.

The donkeys running the cruise ship have since imposed a mask mandate but that's closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. :rolleyes:

Much better writing by a British lady associated with Cruise Critic.

Yes. Including the critical updatehttps://www.cruisecritic.com/news/5727/
Accounts from Sue Bryant who is another travel writer onboard https://www.cruisecritic.com/news/5732/

Also to note, bolding mine.
"Since then, Bryant has written a full account of the sailing and how the ship has handled things. Meals have been delivered to passengers' cabins, as well as drinks. The captain is hoping to get clearance for people to go out for fresh air on Friday (SeaDream I does not have any balcony cabins)."

Another other useful tidbit from this article.

How's that "luxury experience" working for them now? Locked up in cabins without balconies for the duration.

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.

It's now seven Covid positive passengers on board SeaDream, per Sue Bryant's account:

https://www.cruisecritic.com/news/5732/

I just . . . Umm, well, nope. No words, really. Sigh.

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.

Well, they get nice food and beverage delivered to the door*, but for those who have been pretty much at home and want a reminder of what a cruise cabin looks like... You may be looking at this ~195 sq.ft./18.12 sq. m cabin with longing or unease (possibly both). Looks like passengers who tested negative will get to debark on Saturday which was also when it was scheduled to complete. Passengers were allowed out on Friday for an hour on rotation and were assigned zones. The positive passengers will likely be removed to quarantine on land. I'm guessing crew will stay onboard.

The next cruise currently listed on their website is November 21, 2020 starting in Bridgetown https://seadream.com/voyages/12045A

*I also ask myself if this is appropriate food delivery where the hallways are fairly narrow while there are known positives onboard and more test results pending. Edit: Possibly stated procedures a bit better than I feared (delivery while passenger waiting at open door)
OMAAT linked in the tweet thread notes two travel vloggers are also onboard so that is at least four travel media specialists of the 53 passengers.

Even the most opulent jail cell is still a jail cell and if I'm not mistaken an hour outside in an assigned zone is comparable to what is provided to prisoners in supermax penitentiaries.

Sea Dream for some reason grouped a transatlantic cruise from the UK to Barbados & around Barbados with another bookable cruise embarkation in Barbados. That seems to be where the initial sick passenger boarded with family.

I think mass cruises will not be allowing back to backs for initial cruises and most US oriented lines don't typically offer multiple embarkation points for passengers. Crew do disembark and shift ships but I think that's also a lesson learned while the No Sail Order was in effect. Crew can also be paid to do a strict self isolation for several days on land before running another PCR test like Aida.

There were some anti-maskers on-board and some people seemed to congregate without social distancing during their allowed fresh air break (despite being told not to)... I do hope passengers self isolate upon returning home or are required to do so as 3 days quarantine onboard the ship may just be pre-symptomatic. I know this isn't likely given how many people tend to travel before more strict lockdown measures begin or cancel vacations when post-travel quarantine measures get put in place. :(

And they call it a five-star cruise? Sounds more like a zero-star cattle boat.

Anyone found without a mask onboard should have been put on a raft and sent away. As long as stupid people continue to do stupid things, none of us will be safe.

Am I understanding right that they plan to release all of the "negative passengers" to fly home? That's recklessly insane. With the same tests that showed these passengers were supposedly "negative" twice before boarding? Until one wasn't. And then 7 (not even in the same family) weren't? These tests simply aren't 100% accurate, and at this point every single passenger needs to be fully isolated until time has passed and *everyone* has tested negative multiple times. That can happen on ship or in a locked quarantine facility at the port, but it really needs to happen. I sure hope the Barbados authorities aren't going to fall for the Ruby Princess/Hartigruten scheme where the ship rushes to disperse all the passengers before they are identifed as the spread vector, and if they do the airlines or destination border agencies will hopefully take action.

And yeah, the 3 guys huddled together to deliver whatever is an example of "pretending to care but missing the point" -- masks, especially surgical masks, go *with* social distancing, not instead of. Yes, there are times when crew may need to be in closer proximity, but food delivery can easily be done by one person in a hall, leaving it outside the door for the passenger to retrieve.

Having been a Sea Dream a while ago (15 years), it was the best cruise ever. ISYN. I wish I could go back, but now I am divorced and under-employed.

So it was all the Abbott rapid test (ID Now) and not a PCR test on board?
Did the Bermudian authorities use PCR?
I thought the Abbott rapid test was less accurate, I have only had the PCR test.