The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on December 30 increased the risk assessment for cruise ship travel to its highest level and said it should be avoided, regardless of vaccination status.
The agency bumped up the travel risk level for cruise travel from Level 3 to Level 4, indicating the risk for Covid-19 is “very high”, and the move “reflects increases in cases onboard cruise ships since identification of the Omicron variant,” the CDC website said.
Cruise Lines International Association, expressed disappointment at the CDC’s elevated risk level, saying, “The decision by the CDC to raise the travel level for cruise is particularly perplexing considering that cases identified on cruise ships consistently make up a very slim minority of the total population onboard, far fewer than on land, and the majority of those cases are asymptomatic or mild in nature, posing little to no burden on medical resources onboard or onshore,” CLIA said in a statement.
Edited by: John Alwyn-Jones, Cruise Editor