Skift Take

This is seemingly more bad news for the cruise industry with this latest recommendation from top U.S. health officials. Still, cruisers gonna cruise, so this may have little effect on future bookings.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Friday people at an increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19 should avoid travel on cruise ships, including river cruises, irrespective of their vaccination status.

Older adults and people with medical conditions are more likely to get severely ill from the disease and should take professional advise before cruise ship travel, the agency said.

For more on cruises during the pandemic, read Skift at “The Lasting Impact of a Year With No Cruises”

Cruise operators have been sailing from U.S. ports again in recent weeks with mostly vaccinated guests and crew after lengthy talks with the CDC.

But a few on-board coronavirus cases and a Delta variant-driven increase in U.S. infections have raised worries about the cruise industry’s recovery from the lows seen last year.

The health agency in May began approving some cruise operations and in June eased its warnings and recommended only fully vaccinated people take trips.

(Reporting by Manojna Maddipatla and Mehr Bedi in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni)

This article was from Reuters and was legally licensed through the Industry Dive publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to [email protected].

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Tags: cdc, covid-19, cruises

Photo credit: A Diamond Princess cruise ship, owned by Carnival Corp., on an earlier cruise pre-pandemic. Rainy City / Flickr

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