MAYBE new fast & cheap COVID testing will get cruising going

[Av8tor]

5$ 15-minute COVID test MAY allow cruise lines to start operating again soon - only time will tell.

 

Hoping...

 

https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/08/27/why-royal-caribbean-carnival-and-norwegian-cruise/

[caribill]

That is why cruise stocks have gone up the last two days.

[leck57]

Not in my book. No vaccine = no real start up in cruising.

[Tak8]

It will also depend on how accurate the test will be.

[Tapi]

MSC invested on 15 machines that can process 70 tests each per hour. That was instrumental in successfully restarting their cruises in the Med 2 weeks ago without a single infection. If testing was key in that successful relaunch, then these news about $5 rapid tests is more of a bigger news for the cruise industry than many realize. 
 

This may turn out to be the missing link necessary to relaunch cruising here in the USA. With all the other protocols in place in addition to this new test, I’d feel confident about cruising again, even if a vaccine hasn’t been created yet. I think that testing will minimize the risk of sailing with an infected passenger more than vaccines will. 

[Abercrombie2019]

36 minutes ago, Tapi said:

MSC invested on 15 machines that can process 70 tests each per hour. That was instrumental in successfully restarting their cruises in the Med 2 weeks ago without a single infection. If testing was key in that successful relaunch, then these news about $5 rapid tests is more of a bigger news for the cruise industry than many realize. 
 

This may turn out to be the missing link necessary to relaunch cruising here in the USA. With all the other protocols in place in addition to this new test, I’d feel confident about cruising again, even if a vaccine hasn’t been created yet. I think that testing will minimize the risk of sailing with an infected passenger more than vaccines will. 

Lower case counts in the US will be the key to restarting cruising.  

Edited August 29, 2020 by Abercrombie2019

[ABoatNerd]

Irregardless of the test price $, accurate must be paramount.

 

So your at the dock and the test is negative - what happens to all your $ investment.

 

The ship leaves in 4 hrs - is there another test?

 

No thank you at all. Not purchasing such a scenario.

[bronzey214]

1 hour ago, ABoatNerd said:

Irregardless of the test price $, accurate must be paramount.

 

So your at the dock and the test is negative - what happens to all your $ investment.

 

The ship leaves in 4 hrs - is there another test?

 

No thank you at all. Not purchasing such a scenario.

If the test is negative, you walk on. If you test positive, your cruise gets cancelled and you get reimbursed.

[voljeep]

I'm sad and glad we don't have a cruise scheduled until 4/2021 ... 🍻 ... and it's a 'drive' to, not 'fly' to port

 

maybe in 2022, we'll schedule a "fly to" cruise ... that was the plan anyway before all this started ... 🏁

[mcrcruiser]

imo both a  vaccine that protects against the latest  mutated form of covid 19 &  the Abbott Laboratory test will be needed . Reason is that not every one is willing to take the vaccine injections . Every one must remeber that cruise ships  are confined areas  .This is why ll the deaths happened on the Quarantined Diamond Princess in Tokyo  ,at the beginning of this covid 19  health disaster

 

 We have our post covid 19 cruise booked for Jan 15th ,2022  . However ,unless there is both a current Covid 19  vaccine &  the test ,we would not take the cruise .We are in that  high risk category with being over 80 &  undelying medical  issues 

 

  We love to cruise (87 past cruise  tells you )  ;but ,we must be assured of safety to our well being 🙄

[jondfk]

1 hour ago, bronzey214 said:

If the test is negative, you walk on. If you test positive, your cruise gets cancelled and you get reimbursed.

 

In that scenario, getting your refund (5 or 6 months later) is the least of your problem.

 

Now that you've had a positive test you won't be flying home.  You'll be looking for a location near the pier to ride out your quarantine, all at your own cost.  Princess will wash their hands of you immediately upon a positive test.  Doesn't sound like a scenario I'd like to roll the dice on.  Perhaps if I was driving to the pier I'd feel different.

 

A rapid test could be useful for crew and dockside staff.  Test the shoreside personnel every single day.  Test the crew something like every 5th day.  But again, the challenge becomes what do you do when you find an inevitable positive?

 

Rapid testing may be a great help to ramp cruising back up, but only once community spread is well under control via vaccine or good social behavior.  Neither of these are imminent in the U.S.A. I'm afraid.

[gardenbunny]

44 minutes ago, mcrcruiser said:

We have our post covid 19 cruise booked for Jan 15th ,2022  . However ,unless there is both a current Covid 19  vaccine &  the test ,we would not take the cruise .We are in that  high risk category with being over 80 &  undelying medical  issues 

 

  We love to cruise (87 past cruise  tells you )  ;but ,we must be assured of safety to our well being 🙄

 

Exactly the point - we are adults with common sense to choose what, when and where to do what is best to protect ourselves, regardless of this virus or any other situation that has the potential to cause harm.

Like my Dad used to tell me when I was growing up and wanted to do something and I used the excuse “everybody else is doing it” his reply would always be “so if everybody else is jumping off a building would you do it too?”. 😊

Freedom of personal choice and responsibility.   Give us the facts on what you need to do and decide for yourself the risk you are willing to take.

[gardenbunny]

14 minutes ago, jondfk said:

Now that you've had a positive test you won't be flying home.  You'll be looking for a location near the pier to ride out your quarantine, all at your own cost.  Princess will wash their hands of you immediately upon a positive test.  Doesn't sound like a scenario I'd like to roll the dice on.  Perhaps if I was driving to the pier I'd feel different.

 

A rapid test could be useful for crew and dockside staff.  Test the shoreside personnel every single day.  Test the crew something like every 5th day.  But again, the challenge becomes what do you do when you find an inevitable positive?

That is a good point.  Perhaps until this virus is under control (such as how the seasonal flu currently is) trip insurance may have to temporarily find a way to make exceptions and allow coverage for such situations when you have a positive test and cannot get home.  The current CDC guidelines state you can be around people after 10 days from date of positive test.

If you were to get very ill with seasonal flu and had to stop your trip they cover it.  Contagion with seasonal flu is still high and not everyone gets vaccinated.

There are so many “what ifs” with this virus.

 

[ABoatNerd]

2 hours ago, bronzey214 said:

If the test is negative, you walk on. If you test positive, your cruise gets cancelled and you get reimbursed.

 

bronzey214, what guarantee is there of reimbursement, from whom, how long to wait. Likely would not include the customer's airfare and other related costs.

 

Then, the purchase of another one way air fare home from the dock.

 

Not so fast.

[drowelf]

11 hours ago, leck57 said:

Not in my book. No vaccine = no real start up in cruising.

Same here.

 

Better testing will help the work/school/general life experiences, but won't help out the cruise industry. 

[Hlitner]

There are two issues with fast tests (based on antigens).  1.  These tests have previously had about a 20% false negative rate (which means 1 in 5 of those who test negative may well have COVID).  2.  According to a pretty decent study done by Johns Hopkins, no test (including the more accurate PCR tests) is very dependable for the first 4 days after a person is exposed to COVID.  So consider these two items when it comes to cruising.  A majority of cruisers must travel long distances (including airports and flying) to get to their cruise port and often spend 1 or more nights at the cruise port area.  Any exposure during that trip will generally not be detected by any test prior to cruising.  And even those who have previously contracted the virus (and are asymptomatic) may still test negative (especially with the less accurate fast antigen tests.

 

Given this scenario it is hard for me to accept that the CDC will soon open up the USA to cruises.  I would welcome some rebuttal to what I have posted here.....since DW and I love to cruise. 

 

Hank

[jennybenny]

Yeah, that may work, but false positives would keep you from boarding, and if ONE person in my party was denied boarding we'd all want to stay home. So, depending on what the policy would be for THAT scenario, it would determine if we would really cruise under those conditions, but I'd love to see cruising begin again. For now, We'd only book somewhere a cruise we could drive to and not add a hotel stay beforehand.  

[Lucky TGO]

16 hours ago, ABoatNerd said:

Irregardless of the test price $, accurate must be paramount.

 

So your at the dock and the test is negative - what happens to all your $ investment.

 

The ship leaves in 4 hrs - is there another test?

 

No thank you at all. Not purchasing such a scenario.

You test positive for COVID-19 and your not allowed on the cruise. ( IF the test was ACCURATE?? Rightfully so)

So your standing at the pier with your luggage in your hand now what do you do? Sorry I will never take that chance. 
I totally agree with ABoatNerd. 
Tony


 

[caribill]

19 hours ago, Tak8 said:

It will also depend on how accurate the test will be.

 

Per the link in Post #1

 

"demonstrated sensitivity of 97.1% (positive percent agreement) and specificity of 98.5% (negative percent agreement) in patients suspected of COVID-19 by their healthcare provider within the first seven days of symptom onset."

 

Of course the ideal is to get accurate testing for those who do not have any symptoms which includes people who are two days away from experiencing symptoms and those who will never present symptoms, both of which can spread the virus to others.

 

And as others have pointed out, no test so far (and maybe never) can tell if you have been infected within the previous two days.

[caribill]

3 hours ago, jennybenny said:

Yeah, that may work, but false positives would keep you from boarding, and if ONE person in my party was denied boarding we'd all want to stay home. So, depending on what the policy would be for THAT scenario, it would determine if we would really cruise under those conditions, but I'd love to see cruising begin again. For now, We'd only book somewhere a cruise we could drive to and not add a hotel stay beforehand.  

 

 

The way MSC handled this situation:

 

So far, the health protocols, which include mandatory rapid result COVID-19 tests at check in, caught five passengers with positive antigen swab tests at embarkation in Genoa.

 

"All of them, as per protocol, went through all steps of the successive secondary medical screening which included the RT-PCR (molecular) tests. All five eventually resulted negative at this second test," an MSC spokesperson said. "Additionally, a small number of other guests were denied embarkation as they did not meet requirements for boarding including residence in countries at high risk outside the Schengen area."

[caribill]

42 minutes ago, caribill said:

 

Per the link in Post #1

 

"demonstrated sensitivity of 97.1% (positive percent agreement) and specificity of 98.5% (negative percent agreement) in patients suspected of COVID-19 by their healthcare provider within the first seven days of symptom onset."

 

Of course the ideal is to get accurate testing for those who do not have any symptoms which includes people who are two days away from experiencing symptoms and those who will never present symptoms, both of which can spread the virus to others.

 

And as others have pointed out, no test so far (and maybe never) can tell if you have been infected within the previous two days.

 

correction
 Link to this information is at https://abbott.mediaroom.com/2020-08-26-Abbotts-Fast-5-15-Minute-Easy-to-Use-COVID-19-Antigen-Test-Receives-FDA-Emergency-Use-Authorization-Mobile-App-Displays-Test-Results-to-Help-Our-Return-to-Daily-Life-Ramping-Production-to-50-Million-Tests-a-Month

[HappyInVan]

1 hour ago, caribill said:

 

Per the link in Post #1

 

"demonstrated sensitivity of 97.1% (positive percent agreement) and specificity of 98.5% (negative percent agreement) in patients suspected of COVID-19 by their healthcare provider within the first seven days of symptom onset."

 

 

All it means is that for every 1,000 passengers with a negative result, there could actually be 15 passengers with covid19. Back to square one. How widespread is the community spread of the disease? What is the positivity test rate for the country/region/state?

 

[caribill]

6 hours ago, HappyInVan said:

 

All it means is that for every 1,000 passengers with a negative result, there could actually be 15 passengers with covid19. Back to square one. How widespread is the community spread of the disease? What is the positivity test rate for the country/region/state?

 

 

It also means the test was not designed to check persons that do not present symptoms:

 

"It is intended for the qualitative detection of nucleocapsid protein antigen from SARS-CoV-2 in nasal swabs from individuals suspected of COVID-19 by their healthcare provider within the first seven days of symptom onset."

 

In other words, not intended for what we hope it could be used for: to screen all the symptom-less passengers who want to embark on a cruise.

 

It is not designed to find people who may have the virus and could be contagious, but who do not present symptoms yet.

 

Link to this information is at https://abbott.mediaroom.com/2020-08-26-Abbotts-Fast-5-15-Minute-Easy-to-Use-COVID-19-Antigen-Test-Receives-FDA-Emergency-Use-Authorization-Mobile-App-Displays-Test-Results-to-Help-Our-Return-to-Daily-Life-Ramping-Production-to-50-Million-Tests-a-Month

 

[bubbapuck]

Just saw a news report on this. It has been approved by the FDA and has 99% accuracy. The test time Is about 15 mins. The company is making 50 million tests in the next few months. This makes me optimistic our mid 2021 cruise may go on. 

[caribill]

6 hours ago, bubbapuck said:

Just saw a news report on this. It has been approved by the FDA and has 99% accuracy. The test time Is about 15 mins. The company is making 50 million tests in the next few months. This makes me optimistic our mid 2021 cruise may go on. 

 

But note that it "demonstrated sensitivity of 97.1% (positive percent agreement) and specificity of 98.5% (negative percent agreement) in patients suspected of COVID-19 by their healthcare provider within the first seven days of symptom onset."

 

In other words, very accurate within 7 days of symptom onset. It is very helpful to let providers know if the symptoms are due to something other than Covid-19.