CDC Says Cruises from U.S. Ports May Resume in July
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After preventing cruise ships from launching from U.S. ports for more than a year, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta released a new timetable in the Framework for Conditional Sailing Order that may allow sailing from ports like Miami and Everglades in Florida as soon as July 2021.
Fla Senator Rick Scott
According to a report in
USA Today, the timetable depends on cruise organizations following guidelines that require either trial sailings or vaccination for almost the entire crew and passengers. CDC has been under pressure from the industry and Florida Senators Rick Scott and Marco Rubio and Alaska s Sen. Dan Sullivan who filed a lawsuit and new legislation to resume cruises in the summer.
The CDC Letter to Cruise Lines: What It Means
The CDC letter to the cruise lines has opened the path for resuming cruises in July. What does this mean, and what are those details?
Photo Credit: Matt Bannister / Shutterstock.com
The letter sent out by the CDC yesterday came at the best possible time for the cruise industry. Time has been running out lately for the cruise lines to make a mid-July restart possible, while cruise lines will have been in the planning stages for ships to move to other areas in the world.
During an earnings call yesterday, Michael Bayley, the President for Royal Caribbean, said the changes brought on by the CDC make a mid-July start update not only possible but likely. It also means that cruise lines have two options to sail from July onwards. With a 95% vaccinated guest mandate, and without that mandate.
“As allowed under a radical, untested legal theory dating to the 1970s, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and a developer are being sued by Wilde Cypress Branch, Boggy Branch, Crosby Island Marsh, Lake Hart, and Lake Mary Jane, along with (Charles) O’Neal, who is best known as president of the conservation organization Speak Up Wekiva.”
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USA TODAY
Cruising could restart in mid-summer in American waters, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said late Wednesday in a letter to the cruise industry that USA TODAY obtained. We acknowledge that cruising will never be a zero-risk activity and that the goal of the CSO’s phased approach is to resume passenger operations in a way that mitigates the risk of COVID-19 transmission onboard cruise ships and across port communities, Aimee Treffiletti, head of the Maritime Unit for CDC’s COVID-19 response within its Global Mitigation Task Force for COVID-19, said in the letter.
In a statement about the letter, spokesperson Caitlin Shockey gave USA TODAY a more specific timeline. Cruises could begin passenger voyages from the United States in mid-July, depending on cruise lines pace and compliance with the CDC s Framework for Conditional Sailing Order.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they are "committed" to allowing cruise ships to resume passenger operations in mid-summer, the agency.