The world has experienced tremendously shocking and dramatic events in recent decades: 9/11, tsunamis, earthquakes, nuclear accidents, and the 2008 economic crash. None of that completely stopped cruises, but Covid-19 and its global spread have managed to paralyze the world in a way we have never seen before.
All entries related to the pandemic timeline are accessible here.
Article from CruisesNews magazine no. 52 – June 2020
In late January, a strange type of pneumonia, primarily localized in Wuhan, a Chinese city of 11 million inhabitants, began to dominate news broadcasts and newspapers worldwide. It seemed exotic, distant, yet worrying, given the speed with which the Chinese government was constructing a new hospital in Wuhan. In response, MSC Cruises and Royal Caribbean announced on January 25 the cancellation of cruises to China. Furthermore, most cruise lines announced they would deny boarding to passengers who had been in China, Hong Kong, Macau, or South Korea within the previous 14 days.
However, in Europe we continued to believe that it wouldn't affect us much, even when the WHO declared a health emergency on January 30th, with Wuhan already under lockdown. After all, the recent emergencies declared for Zika, Ebola, Polio, and swine flu had had a significant impact in the media, but few actual cases in Europe. That same day, two isolated cases were reported in Italy, while other countries also announced suspected cases; however, it wasn't until three weeks later, on February 20th, that Italy had a third and fourth confirmed case. While many airlines were canceling their flights to China, the Costa Smeralda was held up in Civitavecchia because a passenger from Macau was showing symptoms, but after hours of tension, the ship was released.
In February, the coronavirus went from being considered a problem in China to being a global problem.
In those three weeks when the coronavirus went from being a “China problem” to a global problem, the cruise industry experienced the first episode of its nightmare. A passenger who disembarked the Diamond Princess in Hong Kong on January 25 went to a hospital on February 1 and tested positive for Covid-19, putting Japanese health authorities on alert. The Diamond Princess arrived in Yokohama on February 3, a day ahead of schedule, where passengers were to disembark on the 4th and begin the next cruise. However, Japanese health authorities ordered everyone to remain on board for monitoring, and as a result, 10 positive cases of coronavirus were found: three Japanese, two Australians, three people from Hong Kong, one American, and one Filipino crew member.
Yet another image problem for cruise ships, which have been singled out in many media outlets as hotbeds of infection.
Japan prohibited the Diamond Princess from disembarking passengers and crew, both healthy (or asymptomatic) and sick, and forced it to remain quarantined in port for 14 days, with passengers confined to their cabins. Day by day, cases on board grew, and by February 10th, there were 135 infected individuals, but only 439 of the 3,700 people on board had been tested. The cruise line fully cooperated with the Japanese authorities, but the limited knowledge at the time about the virus, the lack of testing, and the absence of established protocols led to chaos in hospital admissions. Patients with very mild symptoms, who had tested positive, were hospitalized before seriously ill passengers who had not yet been tested. Furthermore, there came a point when Japanese hospitals refused to admit any more patients from the ship to avoid being overwhelmed, as many are small, private hospitals contracted with the public system, with limited capacity and resources. The Diamond Princess was leading news broadcasts around the world, and international alarm was growing by the minute.
In Spain, after days of debate about the "exaggeration", the cancellation of the Mobile World Congress on February 12 was announced, as most of the attendees would have been Asian and large companies had already declined to attend.
Meanwhile, Holland America Line's Westerdam, also sailing in Asia, was turned away by as many as five countries before ending its cruise in Cambodia on February 14. A small sample of 20 passenger tests yielded negative results.
On February 19, after 14 days of quarantine, 443 passengers from the Diamond Princess who had tested negative were allowed to begin disembarking and were to be repatriated to their countries of origin on different flights. At that time, 621 people on board were infected, and passengers who shared cabins with them had to remain on the ship.
The following day, Italy reported only four cases, but the situation quickly spiraled out of control: 20 cases and one death on the 21st, 79 cases on the 22nd, and 157 cases on the 23rd. Several towns in northern Italy were locked down, while a large group of Spaniards landed in Pisa to board the Costa Smeralda in La Spezia and attend its christening, with Penélope Cruz as godmother, the following day in Savona. Upon landing in Pisa, our temperatures were taken, then again to access the cruise terminal, and a third time before boarding. Cruise lines announced they would also not accept passengers from the most affected Italian regions.
The chaotic handling of the outbreak on the Diamond Princess by the Japanese authorities aggravated the problem, which would result in more than 700 infected, 13 dead and 27 days of nightmare.
The christening of the Costa Smeralda went smoothly, with lively parties on board, and we returned home on the 24th amidst jokes from friends about having been in northern Italy (although outside the most affected regions). By February 28th, there were already 800 cases in Italy, and the situation was making headlines worldwide, leading to situations where Italian passengers were being turned away. For example, the MSC Meraviglia was refused entry to Jamaica and Grand Cayman without a clear reason, simply because it had many Italian passengers on board. And on February 28th, Mexican officials issued a "health certificate" stating that the health situation on the ship was normal and that only one crew member and one passenger had seasonal flu. Given the way things were developing, Costa Cruises and MSC Cruises began canceling reservations for Italians on Caribbean cruises to avoid being seen as potential sources of infection.
On March 1, the last crew member left the Diamond Princess, which was disinfected before a small group of officers returned to resume their basic duties. The final toll of that tragic episode was more than 700 positive cases and 13 deaths.
During the first days of March, global alarm continued to grow, with the number of cases rising rapidly in Italy and many countries detecting outbreaks. In addition, several cruise ships reported cases, such as that of an Italian passenger on the Costa Luminosa who became the first positive case in Puerto Rico, and the 21 positive cases on the Grand Princess on March 8, among others. Fear began to grip many customers with reservations, who started wanting to cancel their cruises, and the pace of new bookings slowed. To counteract this, cruise lines launched new cancellation policies with lower penalties and longer cancellation periods.
Doubts about the economic viability of major shipping corporations have been dispelled with strong capital injections.
Italy completely closed its borders on March 9th, and the following day, Costa Cruises was forced by this decision to announce the suspension of its cruises until April 3rd. Cruises currently underway would only allow Italian passengers to disembark in Italian ports so they could return home. Meanwhile, MSC Cruises canceled cruises in the United Arab Emirates, which had already imposed travel restrictions, while attempting to salvage its Mediterranean cruises by avoiding embarkation in Italian ports. Pullmantur Cruises rescheduled its "5 Wonders of the Mediterranean" route, transforming it into a itinerary focusing on the Balearic Islands and the French Riviera.
On March 12, Princess Cruises, whose reputation had been seriously damaged following the high-profile Diamond Princess and Grand Princess tragedies, announced the suspension of all its cruises for two months. In addition, the US suspended all flights to and from Europe. In Spain, several autonomous communities announced the closure of schools starting Monday, March 16, and the government immediately banned the entry of cruise ships, with the exception of those needing to disembark passengers, which were given until March 15 to do so. After that date, a special permit would be required. The MSC Grandiosa disembarked the Spanish passengers who had boarded that same morning and announced that it was suspending operations until April 5.
March 13, 2020. The day that changed everything.
On March 13, Spain, with 132 deaths and 5,100 infected, declared a State of Emergency and ordered the population to stay home starting Sunday, March 15. The US declared a National Emergency, and the government also forced cruise lines to suspend their operations in the country for 30 days, effectively paralyzing cruises in the Caribbean, as the vast majority of them departed from Miami, Fort Lauderdale, or Port Canaveral.
The day began with Disney Cruise Line suspending its sailings until the end of the month, and two North American river cruise companies, Avalon and AmaWaterways, until the end of April. Virgin Voyages, which was launching its first cruises in Miami during those early days of March, announced a long hiatus until July 15. The cruise lines of the Royal Caribbean, Norwegian Cruise Line, and Carnival Corporation groups immediately complied with government orders, and the Seatrade Cruise Global trade show, scheduled to take place in Miami from April 20 to 23, was postponed. We would later learn that the show would not be held in 2020.
The closure of the Italian border and the ban on cruise ships in Spain thwarted the possibility of continuing to operate in the Mediterranean.
With the Caribbean closed to cruise ships, the situation in Europe wasn't much better. Celestyal Cruises, faced with the closure of some countries to Spanish, Italian, and Asian passengers, announced the suspension of its cruises until May 1st, and Costa Cruises suspended all its cruises until April 3rd. MSC Cruises initially announced a 30-day halt to its Caribbean cruises, attempting to continue operating in Europe, but just a few days later it yielded to the inevitable and suspended operations until April 30th. Pullmantur suspended its cruises until May 2nd, and the ambitious renovation of the Allure of the Seas at the Cádiz shipyards was postponed due to the shipyard closures.
Since then, we have witnessed repeated cruise cancellations, with no clear return date in sight at the time of writing. Thousands of passengers affected by the cancellations are demanding refunds, which could bankrupt some cruise lines and travel agencies. Therefore, at the end of March, the government authorized travel agencies to issue vouchers for the value of the cruise fare, redeemable within the following 12 months. If the customer has not been able to use the voucher within that time, they can request a refund. This provides a significant lifeline to cruise lines and travel agencies.
On March 25, Emiliano González, President of MSC Cruises Spain, and a beloved leader of the cruise industry and the tourism sector in our country, passed away in Madrid.
If the repatriation of the passengers was a logistical chaos due to a lack of flights, that of the crew members much later has not been any easier.
On March 30, Celebrity Cruises remotely took possession of the Celebrity Apex, whose crew had boarded weeks earlier. Being in a confined environment, having embarked before things got really bad, led them to become overly relaxed and hold parties on board without masks or social distancing, ultimately resulting in a small coronavirus outbreak.
Initially, cruise lines kept their crews on board, hoping to resume service soon. However, the extremely high cost of this situation, the risk of outbreaks among crew members, and the realization that the pandemic would last longer than expected, led the companies to reconsider. They began trying to send crew members home, encountering very few available flights and numerous obstacles to disembarking them. So much so that it was decided to group crew members of similar nationalities on the same ship and use it to repatriate them to their countries of origin. This resulted in historic moments in Manila Bay, with more than 25 cruise ships anchored, disembarking Filipino crew members.
With ships idled and time ticking away, cruise lines began to see their finances squeezed and the risk of bankruptcy looming. Carnival Group, Royal Caribbean, and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings all maneuvered to secure funding through bank loans, convertible bonds, and other financial resources, and all met their expectations, guaranteeing enough funds to survive until 2021.
Once again, a media image problem.
One of the biggest problems for cruise ships in this crisis is the media's oversensitivity towards them. Cruise ships are obligated to report sick passengers, unlike airlines, trains, buses, or hotels. This means that any report of a passenger with a fever is treated as a "possible case of coronavirus." Furthermore, the unreliability of rapid tests, poorly performed PCR tests, and serological (antibody) tests have added even more uncertainty to every case.
The US government forced the suspension of cruises, and, cornered, the shipping companies decided to stop worldwide.
Spain recently granted special permission to the Norwegian Breakaway and the Seven Seas Navigator to disembark crew members in Barcelona and repatriate them from there on flights. Two crew members tested positive in serological tests, meaning they had Covid-19 antibodies, which indicates they had had the disease, but not necessarily that they currently had it. Immediately, both the state news agency EFE and all newspapers and television stations reported that a cruise ship "with 400 passengers" in Barcelona was under quarantine due to two positive cases, when in fact there were no passengers on board, only crew members, and the relevant PCR tests to determine whether the virus was still active or if these individuals had, fortunately for them, recovered, had not yet been carried out.
Light at the End of the Tunnel
: At the end of May, when this article was written, Spain announced it would reopen its borders to tourism on July 1st, while Italy and France would do so on June 15th. There is still no date set for the resumption of cruises; most cruise lines have suspended operations until the end of July, and Princess Cruises and Holland America Line have even completely canceled their summer season in Europe and Alaska.
Croisieurope, the French family-owned river cruise company, has announced that it will begin operations on July 16th with cruises on the Douro River from Porto, on the Guadalquivir River from Seville, and in the Mediterranean with its new ocean-going vessel, La Belle des Oceans, departing from Nice for Corsica. A ray of light and hope that we hope will soon be followed by other cruise lines.
