New guidance from the CDC for cruise lines gives them more wiggle room to book more guests. In addition, the CDC's changes announced 05MAY bring cruising closer to standards and protocols in place in the rest of travel and day-to-day life.
Easing Vaccination, Mask , and Isolation Room Standards
Under its voluntary program that assigns public, colour-coded ratings to individual ships, the CDC previously designated a ship as "highly vaccinated" only if 95 per cent of guests 5 and older were vaccinated. Now, a ship must have 90 per cent of guests over 5 vaccinated to qualify as "highly vaccinated."
That may come as a particular boon to the family-focused lines, who have struggled with the lower vaccination rates among youth holding families back from booking.
And while the threshold for guests has dropped, 95 per cent of crew must still be vaccinated in order to achieve the top "highly vaccinated" designation for ships sailing in American waters.
Furthermore, recognizing that the federal mask mandate is no longer in effect for other forms of transportation, like air travel, the CDC's latest guidance acknowledges that masking in cruise terminals is now recommended, as opposed to required.
However, it acknowledged that individual port and local health authorities can enforce their own mask mandates. Cruise lines continue to have a mixed bag of masking rules once on board.
Isolation rooms in predesignated areas are still a requirement under the new CDC guidance for ships in U.S. waters, although they no longer need to have negative air pressure.
"Greater alignment across the travel and tourism sector"
Not surprisingly, CLIA welcomed the CDC's new position and eased requirements.
In a statement, it pointed out again that, "CLIA-member cruise lines continue to provide one of the highest levels of COVID-19 mitigation for the traveling public with higher vaccination rates and higher frequency of testing than most any other settings."
The industry organization also included a subtle dig at continued restrictions, noting that cruising is regulated and held to standards by the CDC in ways that other sectors - even within travel - are not.
Its statement also added that the cruise industry looks forward "to the further development" of CDC cruise guidance "to bring greater alignment across the travel and tourism sector."
