Contact Tracing

[Oca]

My husband and I are booked on the 2022 world cruise on QM2.  We have been reading about other cruise lines and how they are preparing to get back to sailing.  We notice that many lines have instituted methods of 'contract tracing' so that if someone onboard comes down with COVID, the ship can trace others with whom the infected individual had contact and quarantine all of them rather than quarantining all passengers onboard and terminating the cruise.

 

Also we see that other lines have set up arrangements with the different countries they are going to stop at allowing the cruise line to disembark the infected passenger and arrange for them to get medical care at that specific port.  

 

Does anyone know if Cunard has initiated doing either of those 2 things?  It would seem that a world voyage would be difficult to undertake if they don't follow these sorts of guidelines.

[lissie]

You would hope that they adopt the Princess line's medallion system which  has lots of benefits not just contact tracing.  They are both owned by Carnival brand. Unfortunately I've seen no talk of this - just speculation on my part. 

[oceansandseas]

I was under the impression that passengers would not be allowed to sail unless they had been vaccinated. Just hoping that means no one should get Covid-19. 

[Underwatr]

15 minutes ago, oceansandseas said:

I was under the impression that passengers would not be allowed to sail unless they had been vaccinated. Just hoping that means no one should get Covid-19. 

The best vaccines are one 95% effective. A relatively low number of vaccinated people can and will catch COVID, and on a cruise may develop symptoms only after boarding.

 

Transmission should be significantly lower than previously but illness and transmission cannot be ruled out.

 

The current US CDC cruising requirements (with enforced distancing, etc) were developed before any vaccines were approved and probably could be modified if any line instituted a requirement that all passengers and crew must verifiably be vaccinated - but there is no CDC or other industry-wide requirement for vaccination at this point.

[oskidunker]

45 minutes ago, Underwatr said:

The best vaccines are one 95% effective. A relatively low number of vaccinated people can and will catch COVID, and on a cruise may develop symptoms only after boarding.

 

Transmission should be significantly lower than previously but illness and transmission cannot be ruled out.

 

The current US CDC cruising requirements (with enforced distancing, etc) were developed before any vaccines were approved and probably could be modified if any line instituted a requirement that all passengers and crew must verifiably be vaccinated - but there is no CDC or other industry-wide requirement for vaccination at this point.

Absolutely. The question is what happens ton the rest of the passengers?

[mcloaked]

It was very encouraging to see a report a couple of days ago with real world data from about 13,000 health care workers in the UK - where, for those who had both jabs, there were zero symptomatic cases of covid from the time when their immunity had peaked after the second dose, until the present time. This was true for everyone followed up whether they had had Pfizer or Astrozeneca vaccines. So the conclusion is that in the period beyond three weeks after the first jab until the second jab, the reduction in symptomatic covid is around 60%, but once you have had the second jab, you are essentially completely protected from getting symptomatic covid19, which is fantastic news.  It also means that those cruise lines, including P&O for their UK staycation cruises this summer, the risk to passengers will essentially be zero, since they are only allowing passengers to embark if they have had both jabs, and cannot board until a week after the second jab. Cunard had not yet announced any similar policy to P&O's announcement from today, but surely it can't be too long before Cunard does the same.

[ace2542]

15 hours ago, lissie said:

You would hope that they adopt the Princess line's medallion system which  has lots of benefits not just contact tracing.  They are both owned by Carnival brand. Unfortunately I've seen no talk of this - just speculation on my part. 

Doesn't Cunard have a slower internet connection or wifi connections than princess does or that Royal or NCL. I know Royal has the best at sea. I have always been under the impression that Cunard didn't really have very good internet and that kind of thing.

[lissie]

5 hours ago, ace2542 said:

Doesn't Cunard have a slower internet connection or wifi connections than princess does or that Royal or NCL. I know Royal has the best at sea. I have always been under the impression that Cunard didn't really have very good internet and that kind of thing.

Exactly - they'd have to upgrade all of the infrastructure, the servers and routers. I'm reading a book about trans-Atlantic travel in the 20s and 30s - there used to be no ensuite outside of 1st class - but Cunard has adapted to Indoor plumbing - so I don't see why they can't adapt to decent internet connectivity  particularly as bluetooth is essential for contact tracing.