COVID cases found onboard Charleston’s Carnival Sunshine ship as CDC relaxes health rules
On Thursday, just hours after the first major cruise ship to leave South Carolina since the pandemic began set sail from Charleston, the CDC announced that its strict health and safety requirements for cruises would become nonbinding recommendations starting Saturday. And within its first day at sea, the ship already has reported COVID cases aboard.
The change from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention comes a little over two weeks after the agency recommended against cruise travel of any kind as the omicron COVID-19 variant spreads around the country. Since at least last week, nearly every large U.S. cruise ship had a COVID case on it, according to the CDC’s online case tracker.
As of Friday afternoon, the Carnival Sunshine ship that had left Charleston Thursday had reached the “yellow” threshold for CDC investigation, meaning at least 0.1% of passengers have tested positive for COVID, according to the CDC’s case tracker.
The Carnival Sunshine is currently on a four-day cruise to Nassau, Bahamas.
“We have been sailing from Charleston for 12 years, so we are excited to be back offering guests from all over the southeastern U.S. the opportunity to cruise from this beautiful, historic and charming community, all while providing support to the local economy,” Carnival Cruise Line president Christine Duffy said in a press release Thursday.
When the CDC began letting cruise ships sail last year, it did so under a “conditional sailing order,” which listed a host of mandatory guidelines cruises had to meet before they would be allowed to sail again.
Here are some of the rules that have been in place:
Requiring vaccination for upwards of 95% of passengers and crew
Tests before boarding for passengers and regular testing for crew
Mask-wearing indoors unless eating or drinking
On Saturday, those mandatory health and safety rules become voluntary when the conditional sailing order expires.
The CDC has said that getting on a cruise right now presents an exceptional risk to travelers and has a Level 4 Travel Health Notice, indicating a “very high risk of COVID-19,” in place. The CDC also recommends getting tested one to three days before a cruise trip and three to five days after, regardless of vaccinations or symptoms.
There have been 14,803 cases of COVID reported on cruise ships between Dec. 30 and Jan. 12, according to the CDC. That’s nearly 100 times the number of cases reported in the first half of December.
However, even as the rules end, the CDC will still have some authority over cruise ships.
Cruise lines, including Carnival, will still have to report onboard COVID cases. The ships are also subject to the public transportation mandate that lasts through March, meaning that passengers will have to wear a mask anytime they are indoors and not eating or drinking.
The plan to let the health and safety requirements for cruise ships become voluntary has been in place since the middle of last fall, but that was before the omicron variant was discovered.
The Cruise Lines International Association said in a statement that the CDC’s decision to allow companies to make their own decision about COVID-19 health and safety reflects the industry’s “unwavering commitment to providing some of the highest levels of COVID-19 mitigation found in any industry.”
“When cases are identified as a result of the high frequency of testing onboard, cruise ship protocols help to maximize onboard containment with rapid response procedures designed to safeguard all other guests and crew as well as the communities that the ships visit,” the industry group said in its statement. “CLIA ocean-going cruise line members will continue to be guided by the science and the principle of putting people first, with proven measures that are adapted as conditions warrant to protect the health of cruise passengers, crewmembers and destinations.”
