Traveler

We are aiming for the 5 nights at the 18-June with Rhodes , Athens, Mikonos stops , so not the "real" inaugural but the first cruise with ports , for sure I will blog here . Already left our names with the local travel agent for the pre booking list . Once I will see the price maybe we will take another one earlier. Finally no need to fly for a cruise , only one hour drive ?

Sometime reality beats the imagination -

More like it was the condition of the Israeli health authorities + the Greek/Cyprus one. But might be followed by the UK .

It might , last planned cruise out of Israel is end of Sep from Haifa to Rome.

That will be a good test for the new protocols. But interesting , until now its the biggest passenger ship ever to dock in Haifa port.

Its not in Royal site but I checked the options on the local site: It will start on the 4-June with few 3 nights cruise to nowhere Will follow by 4 night cruise to Cyprus and later 5 night cruise to Greece island + Athens. Also 7 nights cruise will be added during Jul - Aug and September , latest cruise is 22-Sep . I guess that is answering what will be second country cruises will started from.

Yes , They just announced it here : https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/royal-caribbean-says-shalom-israel-with-odyssey-of-the-seas-debut-301237009.html it will go to Cyprus and Greece , will require vaccine prove to get to the port.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/20/health/us-coronavirus-saturday/index.html A new study (Still without peer review) shows that the vaccine may prevent infection not just the symptoms. Regarding children under 16 , both Moderna and Pfizer started conducting some tests and will have results in few month. By the way , In Israel they already started to admit the vaccine to children with health risk factors (mainly issues with the immune system) , it is being done under emergency approval for the last two month and so far no issues.

Vaccine news (spoiler they are working ? ) Another research was published iin Israel , this time with population of 1.2 Million , 600 K of people that got the second shot already and 600 without vaccine. To make sure the population that were selected were from the same age groups so if they took 100 K of the ages between 60 to 70 they compare it to 100K between the same ages that did not got the second shot yet and so on. In the population that got the vaccine there was 94% infection decrease and even more important 92% decrease in severe illness (out of the people that got infected). As time will pass we can have more and more accurate results but the "issue" is that there will be less and less people that did not got vaccinate to compare with ... currently 90% of the 60 + people in Israel already vaccinated.

Well maybe better news , have a look on the number of new cases in the US , seems its going down , and its not just in the US , something happened and it its not just the vaccine : This graph is from the CDS site (you can also track on number of people that go the vaccine in the US) https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailytrendscases

Agree , the mutations are the extra parameters that need to be take into account. In Israel the UK is now very common , the South African one although less common also exist, that is the reason that the new cases is not dropping as fast as expect, few more weeks and we will know. More important , if the vaccine will still be less effective to prevent getting the C19 but will still prevent severe disease its also something , after all , no one stops the cruise industry when people get a flu ...

Vaccine news : J&J vaccine found to be 66% effective in the global trail with 85% preventing severe disease https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/29/health/johnson-coronavirus-vaccine-results/index.html Although not as good as Moderna and Pfizer but still good news considering it requires only single shot and easy to transfer. Regarding the biggest Pfizer real time test (AKA Israel vaccine program) 3 M got the first shot and 1 M got the second one (30% of all population and 83% of people above 60) . First results of people which are one week after the second shot shows that out of 250K people only 0.04% got infected and more important no one needed to be hospitalize. Out of 750 K people that got the second shot but are not yet passed the 7 days point 315 were infected and only 16 needed to be hospitalized. (much better than the general population) That still should be verified for longer duration to see the real impact of the vaccine but its going the right direction

What works in one region might not impact other. Took two cruise at that region (one from HK one from Chania) alcohol consuming was significant lower comparing to other cruises , during the cruise from Chania the barman were very bored. Alcohol package were buy one get one free (around 600 for two). There are many people that if they will get 5 free drinks (of any type not just the current ones that are being offers) will just not buy the the UDP ...

And the details starts to come, 200 K people were tracked after the first dose against same number of people which did not got the the vaccine yet. Until day 12 the number of people that were infected are more and less the same in the two groups , after day 13 there is a drastic drop of people that were infected from the first group (more than 40% and some number even shows 60%), this is a good indication that the vaccine will not just reduce the illness but also may reduce the risk for being infected. Its just first number , we will need to wait to get more information .

The next two weeks going to be very important to check if the vaccine is a game changer or not. In Israel , more than 20% of the population got the first dose (75% of people over 60/people with health issues and most of the first responders/medical teams) . This week they started to give the second dose The high percentage was possible due to the relative small population (around 8.5 M). the size of the country (around the size of NJ) and the public medical insurance system (everyone is a member of one of four public health organization without any connection to his/her employment status and they have the facilities to run such operation , vaccinating 150- 200 K people per day ). The other important factor was the medical history data which the public health organizations has on each person (digital information for the last 25 years), this convinced Pfizer to send enough doses as Israel promised to share with them and other health organizations the statistical health information . In other words , Israel becomes the "phase 4" trial of the vaccine ... That's why, if the vaccine is working well , at least with the older population we should see improvement in the next two weeks , such as reduction of people that need to be hospitalized and even number of infected people. Let hope for good news.

Go to a "sell expert" lecture during a crabbiean cruise ?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/caribbean-volcanoes-st-vincent-grenadines-la-soufriere-martinique-mount-pelee-b1781214.html%3famp St vincent and Martinique got warning on volcanoes eruption. Let's hope everything will be Ok .

You can track the numbers here : https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-covid-vaccinations?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&time=2020-12-26..latest&region=World

AstraZeneca vaccine was approved for use in the UK . That will expedite the UK vaccination program and might indicate that the FDA will also approve it. AstraZeneca vaccine not require deep freezing for shipment which is a big advantage and will help ship the vaccine to remote places. https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-oxford-astrazeneca-vaccine-approved-for-use-in-uk-12155958

Vaccine news - AstraZeneca wrapping the retest (after the data issue they had few weeks ago) and it should be published soon. it seems that it will have at least 90% success rate preventing getting infected and 100% against severe COVID disease (or in other words 100% against the need to be hospitalized). The data currently being reviewed by the UK equivalent FSA committee and may be approved in a week or so. Vaccine safety - By mistake one of the people that got the Pfizer vaccine had injected with 5* time of the required dose (apparently he got the dose before it was diluted) , although he was kept for observation for few hours he got released and feeling very well. Vaccine testing (will it work or not) - Looks like that the first place with good indication if the vaccine is a game changer or not going to be in Israel (due to: population size, number of available vaccines and speed of given the vaccine) . Currently , 400000 people got the first shoot and the rate is around 100 K per day which going to be increased to around 150 -200 K per day , therefore in about 6 -7 weeks all the population with higher risk (health care, people, older than 60 and people with chronic conidiations) should be vaccinated (mostly with Pfizer). It will be interesting to see the impact on the number of new cases and the number of people who require hospital services. Here a link to track number of vaccine per 100 people https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-vaccination-doses-per-capita?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&time=2020-12-10..latest&region=World Total number of people that got the vaccine : https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-covid-vaccinations?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&time=2020-12-26..latest&region=World the charts from our world of data site:

For our cruise on Spectrum OTS last year I did found some discounts although they were more hard to find than on other cruise. One thing for sure this is the only cruise were it was cheaper to buy the ultimate drinking package on the ship an not using the planner.

I have asked the same question a year ago , as for example cruises to the Greek islands used to be just with Vison and Radiance class but then explorer started to go there and this year Odyssey will . Even if they can not get to port, with the right system and enough tender option they can do it. Same by the way for Alaska (Quantum going were only Radiance used to go) and even the Norwegian fjords (Where Anthem is going this year if C19 will allow). I do not have anything against small ships (We went on Rhapsody twice and plan a cruise that cancelled on Jewel) although I prefer the options on the bigger ships. What I hope is that we will still see longer cruise than 7 days even with the bigger ships, but I do not see RCL building "small" size ships anymore.

Symphony OTS - 4-Sep-2021 Symphony OTS - 11-Sep-2021

Some good news , There might be more Pfizer vaccine portion than we thought. In each bottle after preparing it there suppose to be 5 portions of the vaccine but it found out that there is between 6 to 8 portions. The FDA approved yesterday the use of the extra portion in each bottle as they consider it to be safe and effective. Pfizer said as long as you inject 0.3 mm of the prepared vaccine its OK . so it might be that if in average there are around 7 portion in each bottle and US bought 200 M portions extra 40 million people will be able to get the vaccine

As you might see in the different threads I am trying to be very optimistic and believe the vaccine will help to go back to normality which part of it will be ability to cruise again, but I think there might be one problem that can create some setbacks in returning to cruise. While we are still discussing how fast everyone will get the vaccine in US /Canada/UK and other places (hey , in my country they are talking about almost 50% of people to get the vaccine by April) its seems that its not going to be that fast in the countries were the majority of RCL employees coming from ... As the vaccine currently not being sold to private companies I do not even see how the cruise industry buy it for their employees , I know that Indonesia is starting to use one of the Chinese vaccines but not sure how fast , India trying to develop their own vaccine but it still at early phase. I wonder if companies like RCL will try to buy some vaccine (the Sputnik5 is for sell maybe ? ) I do see issues like fake certifications which might be avoided by requirements for serologic test ? That might be a problem, which I hope will be solved (best by heaving all the people in the world who wants to get a vaccine will be able get it)