Millenium Passengers Refused Entry to St Croix

[Livesteamer]

Our youngster daughter who lives on St Croix has reported to us that Millenium was turned away from St Croix this morning.  Millenium was docked for about 4 hours and no passengers were allowed off.  She departed St Croix at 12:45PM.  

[PAGA]

5 minutes ago, Livesteamer said:

Our youngster daughter who lives on St Croix has reported to us that Millenium was turned away from St Croix this morning.  Millenium was docked for about 4 hours and no passengers were allowed off.  She departed St Croix at 12:45PM.  

This is correct. I live on St Croix. Millennium docked this morning but disembarkation was not allowed due to the percentage of cases onboard exceeding the USVI’s Covid agreement with the cruise lines. Ships must have less than 1% of passengers & crew with confirmed cases to disembark in USVI (St Thomas, St Croix & St John). A number of ships have been turned away from St Thomas past 2 weeks. 

[Virginia100]

This was our itinerary for our 2/21 cruise on Millennium we cancelled a few days ago. This is probably the start of the islands pulling back resulting from CDC updated warnings.

[TeaBag]

So disappointing for all.  

[Livesteamer]

We are supposed to sail on Millenium on 2/21....watching this situation very carefully. Decision time will be before end of January.

[canderson]

2 hours ago, PAGA said:

Ships must have less than 1% of passengers & crew with confirmed cases to disembark in USVI (St Thomas, St Croix & St John). A number of ships have been turned away from St Thomas past 2 weeks. 

Just curious - what's the current positivity % on St. Croix?

It's currently running about 1.2% (1,251 of 105.870) for combined USVI, but I don't see any breakdown.

 

Edited December 31, 2021 by canderson

[PAGA]

7 minutes ago, canderson said:

Just curious - what's the current positivity % on St. Croix?

It's currently running about 1.2% (1,251 of 105.870) for combined USVI, but I don't see any breakdown.

 

Not sure where you saw 1.2%…it’s much higher. Here is the most recent data (through 12/29) from the USVI Department of Health. It’s available on their FaceBook page

[Livesteamer]

Our daughter is a certified athletic trainer with the University of Virgin Islands, and she is indicating St. Croix has a rate of 17% of today.

 

[canderson]

1 hour ago, Livesteamer said:

Our daughter is a certified athletic trainer with the University of Virgin Islands, and she is indicating St. Croix has a rate of 17% of today.

 

And they're worried about Celebrity cruise ship passengers???  I'd be more worried as a passenger stepping onto St. Croix if I were the worrying type, which I'm not at the moment.

[D C]

7 hours ago, PAGA said:

Not sure where you saw 1.2%…it’s much higher. Here is the most recent data (through 12/29) from the USVI Department of Health. It’s available on their FaceBook page

 

Just over 600 active cases in St Croix in a population of a bit over 40k people.  Roughly 1.5% of the population with covid currently. 

[D C]

4 hours ago, canderson said:

And they're worried about Celebrity cruise ship passengers???  I'd be more worried as a passenger stepping onto St. Croix if I were the worrying type, which I'm not at the moment.

Especially with the USVI as a whole only having a ~50% vaccination rate. 

[RichYak]

15 hours ago, canderson said:

Somehow my original reply disappeared.   Also getting my data from USVI Department of Health.

 

My numbers were from the 1,251 "active cases" cited at

https://www.vi.gov/covid/health-data/ as of 30 Dec 21 vs. the population of the VI.

 

Gotta wonder who's running the show there on their statistics.

 

 

 

Positivity rate is typically positive tests divided by tests taken. That's likely the much higher rate that others are describing.

[canderson]

42 minutes ago, RichYak said:

Positivity rate is typically positive tests divided by tests taken. That's likely the much higher rate that others are describing.

Yeah, OK.  There's always some bias in Positivity Rate since you can assume a higher number of those not feeling well in the sample population.

 

I was comparing actual active cases per population, which is how the CDC measures passenger numbers.

[TeeRick]

Right now with all of the at-home self testing, and no accurate reporting of the results either positive or negative, it is really difficult to know what exactly is happening.  So testing and positivity rate should not be of any focus.  People doing testing at centers are there because they feel sick.  So it is highly biased.   It should all be about hospitalizations and deaths.  No other numbers really matter.  But I do understand that cruises will have to deal with the positive test numbers on the ships and in the ports since hospitalizations and particularly deaths are lagging indicators.

[D C]

Test positivity has always been a peculiar metric.  2 years into this and we're no better than 10-15% in our guessing if someone has covid before they test. 

[Virginia100]

I’m sure the rates will go up thru January. I thought about waiting on my 2/21 cruise but thought it wasn’t going to get better but worse so I pulled the plug. Vaccination rates in the Caribbean are not very good.