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Yesterday, I wrote in the article titled SeaDream’s Caribbean Cruise: Champagne, Caviar and COVID-19 about what I described as watching a train wreck in slow motion. The week began with travel writers and cruise bloggers embarking on the SeaDream 1 cruising yachts in Barbados and praising their host’s so-called “strict” health protocols that didn’t even require passengers or crew members to wear masks. So, unsurprisingly, there was one passenger who got sick and tested positive, then five guests tested positive and finally seven guests were confirmed with COVID-19. This morning we learn that a crew member has been added to the infected people.
SeaDream Yacht Club, meanwhile, continues to refuse to provide information to the public, releasing only a single, misleading press release that only one guest was “presumably positive” and that “all non-essential guests and crew members are quarantined in the their cabins. in plenty of caution. “
But the truth is that (so far) eight people from the ship have tested positive and are in isolation ashore in Barbados. In addition to information that travel writers and cruise fans tweeted on and off, the local Barbadian press recently reported that “seven passengers and one crew member who were aboard the SeaDream 1 now docked in Barbados are at the Harrison. Point Isolation Center in St Lucy with COVID-19. “
The seven test-positive passengers are reportedly part of a group of 53 total passengers identified by a Barbadian newspaper as consisting of 37 Americans and 16 other people from the UK, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Germany. Another publication says some of the passengers were from Canada.
As for the remaining forty-six passengers, SeaDream and Barbados allowed them to leave the ship and return to their respective countries! This is obviously in violation of every conceivable health protocol (as well as common sense) in responding to an epidemic on board the ship.
SeaDream says its procedures are “aligned” with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (which technically do not directly apply to this non-US navigation). But the CDC requires all remaining passengers or crew (other than those who tested positive) to be transferred from their cabins to isolation rooms and quarantined. Cruise operators must also enter into “accommodation agreements” with “shore-based facilities for the isolation and quarantine of COVID-19 cases and close contacts”.
Cruise operators are also required to “organize the disembarkation and transport of passengers and crew using non-commercial transport. “Cruise companies also have an obligation to”inform ground transportation, air charter operators, and other agencies with relevant jurisdiction that COVID-19 has been detected in passengers or crew and confirm that operators have procedures in place to notify and protect the health and safety of their personnel (e.g., drivers, flight personnel ). “
It appears that SeaDream has not made arrangements to isolate and quarantine guests who have not yet tested positive. Neither did the cruise operator arrange non-commercial flights. It is questionable whether this company informed the airlines and local transportation that there had been an outbreak aboard their ship and that these particular guests had been on the ship. It appears that both the cruise operator and the port of departure have achieved the same goal: to get guests off the ship and leave the country. To hell with others in local buses, airport terminals, trams and airplanes. Who cares if this outbreak spreads from ship to other countries?
Some of the former guests are now tweeting photos of the boarding commercial flights and back home to various locations around the world. A guest who flew on a British Airlines flight to the UK last night remarked on Twitter that he was “crammed into airport (Barbados) trams like sardines! People who don’t wear masks in flight! “
And people think the cruise is bad, which is ridiculous considering how much effort there is! No social distance, condensed lines, people knocking on us, masks around our chins, crammed into airport trams like sardines! People who don’t wear masks in flight! pic.twitter.com/yx9jFjHSYO
– Cruise with Ben and David (@CruiseWithBD) November 15, 2020
@CDCgov @CLIA @DHSCgovuk @SeaDreamYC @CruiseIndustry
Glad you are back safe and sound
By interest:
– you were on a “special” flight, or @SeaDreamYC get on a commercial flight?
– The airline was aware that you had been exposed to Covid for days
– any tests carried out during the trip
🙏– David Thomas (@djthomashome) November 15, 2020
A local Barbadian newspaper reported that the country’s Chief Medical Officer explained that these eight cruise ship cases “will not be included in the Barbados COVID-19 case count as Barbados considered it a humanitarian mission.” The Minister of Tourism and International Transport was quoted in another newspaper as saying that “Barbados’ image was safe” because “these cases could not be counted as part of Barbadian statistics and therefore should not reflect negatively on the stellar management of the country. virus island. “
There is nothing “humanitarian” or “stellar” about picking up people potentially exposed to a deadly virus on crowded planes and flying them around the world to keep your country’s COVID statistics low.
This ongoing journey-during-a-pandemic-train-wreck reflects badly not only on the SeaDream organization but also on the country of Barbados.
Do you have any comments or questions? Please leave one below or join the discussion on our Facebook page.
Photo credit: The Points Guy / Handout via Reuters / New York Post
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