At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, all countries of the world banned cruise ships. The cruise ship industry has been a major catalyst in the spread of COVID-19 throughout the world. Before the ban on cruise ships in 2020, there was a number of coronavirus outbreaks on board cruise ships, most notably the Diamond Princess.
Cruise ships are floating incubators for the rapid spread of illnesses and viruses. Where you have thousands of people crammed into a small space, it is hard to control the spread of illnesses and virus transmission from people to people.
Stopping the spread of coronavirus in SVG is important for the safety and the health of our people. However, it makes no sense for the government to call for public servants to be vaccinated, whilst cruise ships are allowed to dock in Kingstown. Having thousands of cruise ship passengers wandering around Kingstown on a regular basis is a serious risk to our people. There is a real danger they will transmit the coronavirus to Vincentians with whom they come into contact.
In the best interest of our country and our people’s health, SVG Green Party is calling on the government to ban all cruise ships with immediate effect, from docking in SVG. There is very little financial gain from having cruise ships dock in SVG. Furthermore, the health of our people should be higher priority than ensuring cruise ship passengers have a lovely holiday.
At the end of November 2021, seventeen COVID-19 cases were detected among crew members and passengers on a Norwegian Cruise Liner. The Norwegian Breakaway departed from New Orleans on Nov. 28 and stopped in Belize, Honduras and Mexico on its voyage. There were more than 3,200 individuals on board. All of the identified cases involved people without symptoms of the illness. This makes it even harder to control the spread of the virus.
Also, there were almost one and a half thousand cases of COVID-19 on cruise ships this summer, according to figures from the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Of these cases reported, 49 required hospitalisation and 38 called for a medical evacuation from the cruise ships concerned. Despite strict testing and vaccine requirements with most cruise lines, the CDC said that “ensuring passengers are uninfected at embarkation has proven difficult”.
Cruise liners were badly hit at the start of the pandemic in 2020 when they were dubbed “floating petri dishes” by the media, after soaring cases prevented them from docking at many ports or passengers being allowed to leave.
There are still some concerns from academics who have warned cruise ships could still be a potential source of health risks to passengers, staff and people who live near the ports where the ships dock. The international research team called for “more monitoring” after using evidence from more than 200 research papers on the health of people and the environment in different oceans and seas around the world.
For the sake of our people, and to reduce the spread of coronavirus, the government should ban cruise ships from SVG, says Warrant Officer Ivan Bertie O’Neal BSc (Hons), MSc, MBA, Leader of SVG Green Party. It will be even harder for our nation to tackle the coronavirus if there are multiple variants circulating the country.
