Skift Take

If the Covid surge accelerates, then U.S. health officials could slap the cruise industry with another pause despite the lines' big efforts to make cruising safer.

Carnival Corp said on Tuesday a majority of its ships’ itineraries were unchanged despite a surge in cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant, which has threatened to stall a recovery in the cruise industry.

The world’s largest cruise operator, however, said a few destination ports were reviewing their protocols and processes due to the fast-spreading new variant.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also identified more than 85 cruise ships with COVID-19 cases on board, the agency said on Tuesday.

On Monday, the CDC said 68 ships with COVID-19 cases had met its threshold for an investigation.

The Omicron variant has sparked concerns that U.S. health officials may reintroduce a temporary ban on cruising, just months after U.S. cruise operators resumed guest operations.

Many passengers and media reports, including those from CNN and Euronews, said authorities of a few ports in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico and Mexico disallowed passengers to disembark from cruise ships that were carrying active COVID-19 cases.

“Looks like my cruise this Friday is a cruise to no where,” wrote one Reddit user on a Royal Caribbean forum late Monday.

Carnival said on Monday it would find an alternative destination should it be forced to cancel a port.

Royal Caribbean Group did not respond to a Reuters request for comment, while Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd declined to comment.

“The cruise lines’ reaction to the substantial increase in COVID-19 cases caused by the Omicron surge is largely hit or miss,” said James Walker, a Miami-based maritime lawyer.

(Reporting by Ananya Mariam Rajesh and Praveen Paramasivam in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Maju Samuel)

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: carnival, cdc, coronavirus, omicron, royal caribbean

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