Cruise ships experiencing COVID outbreaks despite 'safety protocols'

Catching COVID-19 on a cruise ship sounds like an extra added layer of horror. In the last few days two of Royal Caribbean's 'Of the Seas' fleet have experienced outbreaks. While Royal Caribbean downplays their globe-spanning super-spreading vacations as infecting less than 1% of passengers, remember that folks may not test positive til after they've returned home and spread it around.

Cruise Hive:

Symphony of the Seas was in the midst of a 7-night Caribbean itinerary that had set sail December 11, 2021, when one guest aboard tested positive for COVID-19. Contact tracing measures were initiated immediately, and additional cases were detected. By the time the ship returned to Miami, the total was 48 positive cases.

Of the 6,091 passengers and crew aboard Symphony of the Seas at the time (at full operational capacity, the ship would carry 8,880 passengers and crew), 95% were fully vaccinated before the sailing. Of the 48 cases detected, 98% of those individuals were fully vaccinated.

Six passengers were medically evacuated from the vessel early. The rest of the positive cases remained in quarantine onboard and debarked the ship when it reached PortMiami on schedule on December 18, after the itinerary that included St. Maarten, St. Thomas, and Perfect Day at CocoCay, Royal Caribbean's private island in the Bahamas.

Symphony of Disease is, I believe the largest cruise ship ever built. Her much smaller sister, only 23rd on the list of giant floating mega-malls, the Odyssey of Disease, has reported 50 cases of COVID-19.

USA Today:

Three passengers and 47 crew members have tested positive for COVID-19 on Royal Caribbean's Odyssey of the Seas cruise ship, which departed Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Saturday for an eight-night Caribbean trip, a spokesperson for Royal Caribbean told USA TODAY.

The ship, which returned briefly to port on Sunday to disembark a passenger with COVID-19, is carrying 3,587 passengers and 1,599 crew. 

The passengers and crew who have since tested positive are quarantining, according to the company's spokesperson, Lyan Sierra-Caro.

"During routine weekly testing of our fully vaccinated crew members, there were test results that came back positive for COVID-19," Royal Caribbean said in a statement shared bySierra-Caro late Tuesday night. "Close contacts were quickly identified, and they each immediately went into quarantine," the statement said,

I do not understand the attraction of floating around the world in a petri-dish, bringing a small pocket of 1990s mall culture everywhere you go. I believe that one of the courts of hell is spending eternity as a cruise ship entertainer with dreams of performing on Broadway.