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MSC starting in August in the Med


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This is the most detailed cruise line mitigation measures plan I've seen. Most of us here have predicted these measures but to see them in writing is encouraging. That MSC is attempting to make port calls under controlled conditions is an indicator that this cruise line is taking an aggressive stance with respect to restoring operations. If I have my numbers correct, the embarkation/debarkation ports and all the port calls are in Italy and Greece where community spread is quite low as measured by positivity and growth rates.

I know from my son-in-law who is an Italian with family in Milan that is currently living in Switzerland that Southern Italy has remained a pretty safe place to travel to. Can't speak with any personal knowledge about Greece but I think community spread there is low. As well, both countries are taking aggressive steps to restore activity in their tourist industries.

Good show, MSC, Italy and Greece. I'd like to see this go off without a hitch as I am a reopening and manage the outcomes of that strategy advocate. While there may be isolated COVID infections during these initial trips, if plans to manage those are successful and the media gives credit for that instead of emphasizing infections without context, that would be nice. Italian and Greek Public Health officials also can't go nuts if isolated infections occur but are handled well.  Not holding my breath for that though. 

https://www.msccruises.com/en-gl/Assets/Health_Safety_Factsheet.pdf

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The thing to "watch" with the MSC launch, among other cruise lines getting back to cruising, is not the inevitable infection aboard ship but (1) how the cruise lines, port authorities and local medical authorities handle infected passengers and crew. (2) Whether involved public health and medical officials don't go nuts over a cruise ship disembarking infected crew or passengers for quarantine in accordance with a pre-approved plan. (3) Whether the media reports cruise ship infection events with responsible reporting rather than intent to shock readers.

I have no doubt in my mind cruising can restart where community spread is reasonably controlled and there are plans in place to manage infections when they inevitably occur on a cruise. Italy, Greece and Taiwan are good examples. I think it will turn out that Norway and the French Polynesias handled things well but politics will discourage restarting again. Experts in the matters of "control" of community spread of a virus make that determination on the basis of several quantifiable measures -  regional R(t) being < 1,  > 10 tests to detect 1 positive case are two good ones. There are other measures of community spread that when pulled into the decision making process produce rational decisions for the public's health.

For those who keep picking on FL identifying it as a dangerous COVID "hot spot", while it may have been just that in late June after reopening in the state began in late May,  it's in pretty good shape as I write this. FL's RT was 1.35 on June 25th at it's recent zenith - roughly 1 person will infect 4 - it is now 0.98 or just less than 1:1. By those measures statewide community spread is declining and "controlled." 32 other states have R(t) values greater than 1,  Hawaii's is 1.31.  

Every other FL data set, including those in the tri-county S. FL region where two cruise ports are located, used to measure community disease burden is downward trending including ED visits for symptoms suggestive of flu or COVID, hospital admissions and ICU or ventilator use. Test positivity rates in Broward County - where Port everglades is located -  were the lowest yesterday that they have been since April - 8.4%. A week ago it took just 5 tests to find 1 positive COVD test. Yesterday it doubled to 10. On the basis of the science, could Port everglades open to cruise ships with community spread appearing to be under control? You could say that. Politically? No chance.

We're going to be dealing with this disconnect between the reality of COVID spread supported by certain reliable data sets versus the alternate reality that is painted mostly by the press that COVID in the US is surging out of control. It's not helping that there are views held by otherwise reliable scientists and medical personnel that the risk of getting COVID has to be reduced to near zero before opening anything - schools for example. That isn't going to happen.

Is SARS-CoV-2 spread a problem? Of course it is and will remain so for a while.  But it is not one that is by any means out of control or unmanageable. Implementing sensible general mitigation measures (masking, distancing, hand washing), works and S. FL is proof of that. Strong local messaging and public health announcements here in Broward County and, where necessary, enforcing these measures work. As well utilizing targeted mitigation measures, for example, selected restrictions by locale or business when those restrictions are backed up by tracing of new cases to a local hot spot, e.g., restaurant, street party, gym, etc., work and again S Fl is proof that they do work without shuttering everything or locking everyone in their homes like is happening in Melbourne. It's an option but, IMO, a bad one. Too economically and socially costly with few public health benefits in the long run. Cities doing this will just keep opening and closing in an endless cycle. When human/host mobility returns, so does COVID infections. For now, learn to manage it. That goes for after a vaccine is approved and distributed at scale. SARS-CoV-2 isn't going away as in eradicated and there will be others like it in the future.

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13 hours ago, JeffB said:

This is the most detailed cruise line mitigation measures plan I've seen. Most of us here have predicted these measures but to see them in writing is encouraging. That MSC is attempting to make port calls under controlled conditions is an indicator that this cruise line is taking an aggressive stance with respect to restoring operations. If I have my numbers correct, the embarkation/debarkation ports and all the port calls are in Italy and Greece where community spread is quite low as measured by positivity and growth rates.

I know from my son-in-law who is an Italian with family in Milan that is currently living in Switzerland that Southern Italy has remained a pretty safe place to travel to. Can't speak with any personal knowledge about Greece but I think community spread there is low. As well, both countries are taking aggressive steps to restore activity in their tourist industries.

Good show, MSC, Italy and Greece. I'd like to see this go off without a hitch as I am a reopening and manage the outcomes of that strategy advocate. While there may be isolated COVID infections during these initial trips, if plans to manage those are successful and the media gives credit for that instead of emphasizing infections without context, that would be nice. Italian and Greek Public Health officials also can't go nuts if isolated infections occur but are handled well.  Not holding my breath for that though. 

https://www.msccruises.com/en-gl/Assets/Health_Safety_Factsheet.pdf

This is the key. Managing a positive case. If done successfully, there’s hope. It’s already been shown (Princess) that quarantining to the ship for several weeks was a disaster. 
 

It’s going to come down to how outbreaks are managed. The virus isn’t going away. 

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12 hours ago, Jill said:

This is the key. Managing a positive case. If done successfully, there’s hope. It’s already been shown (Princess) that quarantining to the ship for several weeks was a disaster. 
 

It’s going to come down to how outbreaks are managed. The virus isn’t going away. 

Well, that's right but, the press reports I'm reading today are not being friendly to the  Paul Gauguin or Huertigruten. Pretty much what I expected. WIthin the several articles I've read, the mention that those infected were handled well to prevent contagion both aboard ship and when the infected disembarked is either no where mentioned or lightly mentioned without details. No credit given to the extensive infection control and containment measures any of these lines developed and implemented. No mention that public health ministers had signed off on them ..... none.  Huertigruten execs have said, they had protocols and they broke down. Fine, fix them and press on but NOOOOOO, the press isn't going to let that happen......

The journalists reporting these COVID related incidents appear to be more interested in continuing the trope that cruising is too dangerous in the COVID circumstance, all of this just fuel to the fire of not opening anything until the risk is unattainably near zero. For example, in Huertigruten's case the "shocking headline" was 69 places that the company cruises to or operates ferry services are at risk for previously controlled COVID spread ..... this without a shred of evidence of COVID spread in any of these ports to support such allegations.  Oh, and sure, TUI has cruised out of Germany, Chinese lines have cruised locally and so have Taiwanese lines without COVID related incidents but, do we hear about these? Nope.

Sick of it.

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The general non cruising public still think of cruises as petri dishes.

Sure even before this pandemic most of my non-cruising friends have cited health issues when deciding not to cruise despite me explaining the fact that outbreaks affect less that 0.01% of annual cruises.

"I don't want to be stuck on a boat with everyone sick around me" is the usual quote.

When I mention cruising resuming the first answer is Diamond Princess where they cite 70% infection rate.

(While failing to even acknowledge that only 10 people had the virus when it docked. Or that it took 6 weeks to spread to the whole ship and that the crew weren't being quarantined properly.) 

I'd love to go on MSC next week but balcony cabins are 1700€ per person ? and I can't get flights to Venice ?

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On 8/4/2020 at 7:50 AM, JeffB said:

Is SARS-CoV-2 spread a problem? Of course it is and will remain so for a while.  But it is not one that is by any means out of control or unmanageable. Implementing sensible general mitigation measures (masking, distancing, hand washing), works and S. FL is proof of that. Strong local messaging and public health announcements here in Broward County and, where necessary, enforcing these measures work. As well utilizing targeted mitigation measures, for example, selected restrictions by locale or business when those restrictions are backed up by tracing of new cases to a local hot spot, e.g., restaurant, street party, gym, etc., work and again S Fl is proof that they do work without shuttering everything or locking everyone in their homes like is happening in Melbourne. It's an option but, IMO, a bad one. Too economically and socially costly with few public health benefits in the long run. Cities doing this will just keep opening and closing in an endless cycle. When human/host mobility returns, so does COVID infections. For now, learn to manage it. That goes for after a vaccine is approved and distributed at scale. SARS-CoV-2 isn't going away as in eradicated and there will be others like it in the future.

 

The problem in Melbourne is it's impossible to manage when people can't follow the rules. Infected people are knowingly out in the community spreading the virus even though they should have been isolating at home. We had 800 infected people not at home when checked on by police. No choice but to lock everyone up before the numbers get too big to control.

The latest outbreak has been traced back to returning overseas passengers hotel quarantine. The security guards employed to make sure guests didn't leave until completing their 14 days quarantine were sleeping with some of the return passengers who turned out to be infected. The guards then passed it on the other people in the community, and now here we are. This is a true story.. I am not even joking! ?‍♂️

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Sad for sure. People don't behave ...... it's not just in the US. My take is that non-compliance with reasonable mitigation measures is part of the problem; the other is the geometric progression issue. i.e., one non-conforming person who becomes infected begets 3 infections, 3 begets 9 and so forth. Before you know it you have 1000 infections. IMO, it's why lock-downs won't work because as soon as you unlock and mobility returns, so do infections. Endless cycle. My view is that you learn how to manage the inevitable disease burden within communities experiencing it.

There is some mathematical sense to trying to drive the R values in a locale as low as possible and lock-downs are a way to do that. R values are the figures that reflect how many people one person infects - it varies periodically but the closer you get it to 1, the better. I think lock-downs are too harmful economically and socially. I'd opt for less restrictive, data driven targeted closures/restrictions, i.e., if street parties or late night bars are spreading the virus, enforce closures of them. Testing and contact tracing are important. The US sucks at this. Other countries, obtaining downward sloping growth rates (R values < 1.0) like Germany, South Korea and others are much better at testing, contact tracing and isolation.

Creating bubbles is a whole different approach. In this scenario you create a living environment free of SARS-CoV-2, make sure it does not get introduced into the bubble and if it does, quickly identify the case(s) and isolate them. It's working in the US National Basketball Association (NBA) that involves at least 500, probably more players, coaches and staff. They reside and play in a single, access controlled space. Testing is conducted periodically on everyone in the bubble.

Obviously there are limits to the size of the bubble - or how many people and in what size a venue can be. Could you create a bubble in the entire city of Melborne? Theoretically, yes. PracticalIy? No ....... the Chinese brutally enforced zero mobility and complete shuttering in Wuhan with rumors that apartment doors were welded shut and proprietors found operating businesses immediately imprisoned. That won't work in democratic countries.

It is pretty clear to me that cruise lines are working to create a sort of bubble on cruise ships. It seems to be working for TUI, for example, who are cruising now with 1200+ passengers and an additional number of crew rigidly screened and/or quarantined before entering the bubble and then essentially confined to the ship's bubble. MSC is trying a similar approach but will make port calls that theoretically break the bubble - but I can see ways to do that and still manage the ships's bubble environment with rapid testing, rigorous tracing and isolating. 

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3 hours ago, cruisellama said:

https://www.cruisecritic.com/news/5510/?et_cid=3350314&et_rid=216816920&et_referrer=Boards_WAR_CC

Interesting set of protocols.  Swab tests for all that board (60-90 wait for test results).  Controlled excursions run by the line.  No touch ordering and contact tracing using the "bracelet".   

What happens if someone test positive pre cruise. Arent there many others lining up with them?

 

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