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Norwegian Cruise Line President and CEO Frank Del Rio said that the company is proposing that all passengers and staff be vaccinated in order to start cruises again on July 4.
“The [US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] has shut us down for over a year now,” he said. “… There are many — if not all — travel, tourism and hospitality venues that are open throughout the country that never shut down or are certainly open today. We want to be treated fairly, we want to be treated just like every other industry. And the CDC is not cooperating up until now.”
CDC guidance on Friday did not give a date by which the agency planned to allow US sailings again for the first time since March 2020. Norwegian, Carnival and Royal Caribbean all suffered massive losses last year, totaling $6.8 billion between them.
“If it takes vaccines to break that logjam with the CDC, that’s what we’re prepared to do,” Del Rio said to CNN’s Erica Hill.
The cruise line would also require passengers to have a negative coronavirus test before boarding, mandate the wearing of masks indoors and would limit capacity to 60%. The return-to-service proposal was submitted to the CDC on Monday, Del Rio said, but the company has not heard back from the agency yet.
“If people are not vaccinated, they’re not getting on board a Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings vessel. … So we will source vaccines for our crew or else we won’t sail,” Del Rio said.
In the CDC’s technical instructions for Covid-19 mitigation for cruises, there’s a requirement for cruise lines to submit daily reports.
“Do hotels report daily? Do airlines report daily? No one does. Why should the cruise industry be exposed to that kind of draconian requirements? It’s just not fair. It’s discriminatory, and we hope the CDC comes to the table soon to discuss all these issues because up to now, they haven’t,” Del Rio said.
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